This important volume tests Bastian’s concept of ‘fracture’, which he developed in La fracture religieuse vaudoise, 18471966 (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2016). The metaphor ‘fracture’ is an effort to describe more accurately the ecclesiastical, theological, and sociological developments in Switzerland as the Free Church movement grew out of the Reformed churches that were intimately tied to social elites and to the governments of each canton. These developments were different from the earlier Baptist or Moravian presences in Neuchâtel, which were theologically, sociologically, and ecclesiologically removed from the established Reformed churches, both protected by the toleration insisted upon by the kings of Prussia. In the case of the nineteenth-century Free churches, these fractures/divisions became parenthetical. In Geneva, the Free churches separated in 1848 and reunited in 1940; in Vaud, they divided in 1847 and united in 1966; and in Neuchâtel there was separation from 1874 to 1943. This volume...

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