Lutheranism

====Germany====
[[File:KirchenordnungSHA.jpg|thumb|The [[Schwäbisch Hall]] Church Order in 1543]]
In [[Germany]], several dynamics encouraged Lutherans to maintain a different form of polity. First, due to de facto practice during the [[Nuremberg Religious Peace]] the subsequent legal principal of [[Cuius regio, eius religio]] in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, German states were officially either Catholic or "Evangelical" (that is, Lutheran under the ''Augsburg Confession''). In some areas both Catholic and Lutheran churches were permitted to co-exist. Because German-speaking Catholic areas were nearby, Catholic-leaning Christians were able to emigrate and there was less of an issue with Catholics choosing to live as "[[crypto-papist]]s" in Lutheran areas. Although Reformed-leaning Christians were not allowed to have churches, Melancthon wrote ''[[Augsburg Confession Variata]]'' which some used to claim legal protection as "Evangelical" churches. Many chose to live as [[crypto-Calvinists]] either with or without the protection offered by the ''Variata'', but this did not make their influence go away, and as a result the Protestant church in Germany as of 2017 was only about ~40% Lutheran, with most of the rest being United Protestant, a combination of Lutheran and Reformed beliefs and practices.<ref name=EKD18>[https://www.ekd.de/ekd_de/ds_doc/Gezaehlt_zahlen_und_fakten_2019.pdf Zahlen und Fakte zum kirchlichen Leben 2019] Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland</ref>

In terms of polity, over the 17th and 18th centuries the carefully negotiated and highly prescriptive [[Church Order (Lutheran)|church orders]] of the Reformation era gave way to a joint cooperation between state control and a Reformed-style blend of consistorial and presbyterian type synodical governance. Just as negotiations over the details in the church orders involved the laity, so did the new synodical governance. Synodical governance had already been practiced in the Reformed Netherlands prior to its adoption by Lutherans. During the formation of the modern German state, ideas about the nature of authority and the best design for governments and organizations came from the philosophies of [[Political philosophy of Immanuel Kant|Kant]] and [[Elements of the Philosophy of Right|Hegel]], further modifying the polity. When the monarchy and the sovereign governance of the church were ended in 1918, the synods took over the governance of the state churches.