German Evangelical Church Confederation

The German Evangelical Church Confederation (German: Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund, abbreviated DEK) was a formal federation of 28 regional Protestant churches (Landeskirchen) of Lutheran, Reformed confession, or United Protestant administration or confession. It existed during the Weimar Republic from 1922 until being replaced by the German Evangelical Church in 1933. It was a predecessor body to the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Besides the smaller Protestant denominations of the Mennonites, Baptists and Methodists, which were organised crossing state borders along denominational lines, there were 29 (later 28) church bodies organised according to the territorial borders of the German states or the Prussian provinces. Those Protestant church bodies, covering the territory of former monarchies with a ruling Protestant dynasty, had been state churches until 1918, with the exception of the Protestant church bodies in territories annexed by Prussia in 1866. Others had been no less territorially defined Protestant minority church bodies within Catholic monarchies, where before 1918 the Roman Catholic Church played the role of state church. Starting in 1852 the German Evangelical Church Conference (aka Eisenach Conference; Deutsche Evangelische Kirchenkonferenz, or Eisenacher Konferenz) became a steady coordinating organisation, which more and more state churches joined. Its executive body was the German Evangelical Church Committee (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenausschuss; DEKA).

Under the Weimar Constitution, there would be no state churches any longer, but the churches remained public corporations and retained their subsidies from government. The theological faculties in the universities continued, as did religious instruction in the schools, however, allowing the parents to opt out for their children. The rights formerly held by the monarchs in the German Empire simply devolved to church councils instead, and the high-ranking church administrators —who had been civil servants in the Empire —simply became church officials instead. Chairpersons elected by synods were introduced into the governing structures of the churches.

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