Reformed Religion, one of the "three christian religions" in Europe: comprising those protestants who rejected the idea of local unions between protestant churches and individual states as well as the idea of state protected church hierarchies (as errected by Lutherans and Anglicans). The belief in providence and determination posed enomous theological and philosophical problems. The rejection of a state ruling over questions of religion made Europes’s indiviudual groups prone to persecution. Strongholds of the reformed religion were the Dutch and the Swiss Republics, their most important minority the