In the Protestant churches at the end of the 18th century, there were efforts to overcome the division between the Lutheran and Calvinist denominations, but there was also resistance to this. The state did not manage to settle this issue in a uniform manner. Thus, in the most progressive province, Rhine-Hesse, the clergy agreed a union in 1817, but bureaucratic obstacles meant that the state did not bring that agreement to fruition until Easter 1822. This union of the two confessions was called the United Evangelical Protestant Church in Rhine-Hesse (Vereinigte evangelisch-protestantische Kirche in Rheinhessen) and received its own church council in Mainz. In the other two provinces, similar agreements were only agreed at the level of individual parishes and many Lutheran and Calvinist churches remained separate. In 1832, a single Protestant church organisation for the whole of Hesse was established with its seat in Darmstadt. The existing united church in Mainz and the individual united church and school councils in Giessen and Darmstadt were brought under its umbrella.Franz, Fleck, and Kallenberg: Großherzogtum Hessen, p. 772. After this, the Evangelical National Church of Hesse was organisationally unified, although the two denominations retained separate churches and confessions in many places. In 1874, a charter with presbyterian-synodal elements was issued for the church, which was modelled on the Prussian of 1835. Henceforth, a , which made church law in cooperation with the Landesherrn, was the summus episcopus (the supreme religious authority).Cosack, p. 142.
