Zwingli, by Hans Usper

Huldrych Zwingli was the reformer of the Swiss city of Zurich. For Zurich, Zwingli created a a simple form of worship designed to focus on preaching, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. He also provided the city with a church order in which lay Christians and ministers together governed the church. Zwingli was greatly concerned with the eradication of idolatry in worship. Under his leadership, Zurich became a model for the democratic enactment of municipal reform. Zwingli taught a basic early Protestantism centered on justification by faith, preaching, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. He emphasized the authority of the written word of Scripture and the disciplined pursuit of the Christian life. He saw baptism as an act of initiation into the Christian community and the Lord's Supper primarily as a thanksgiving or eucharist and a memorial celebration of the symbolic presence of Christ. In this he differed with Martin Luther who came to argue for a more substantial reality of Christ in the Supper. Zwingli's differences with Luther were expressed publicly at the Marburg Colloquy of 1529.