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Reformed church, any of several major representative groups of classical Protestantism that arose in the 16th-century Reformation. Originally, all of the Reformation churches used this name (or the name Evangelical) to distinguish themselves from the “unreformed,” or unchanged, Roman Catholic church. After the great controversy among these churches over the Lord’s Supper (after 1529), the followers of Martin Luther began to use the name Lutheran as a specific name, and the name Reformed became associated...