VINET, ALEXANDRE. - Liberal Protestant apologist and writer, b. at Ouchy (Lausanne) on 17 June 1797, d. at Lausanne on 10 May 1847.
He received a somewhat superficial theological education at the Académie of Lausanne, and then taught French language and literature for several years in Basel, subsequently accepting pastoral appointments as well. Influenced by De Wette, philologist and theologian close to Schleiermacher, then by the currents of the Protestant Réneuf, and by the works of Thomas Erskine, he gradually departed from the orthodoxy of the formulas and worship of the national Church of which he was a member, ultimately rejecting even the Helvetic Confession of Faith, and founding a “Free Church” in Lausanne in the very year of his death. He had a wide following especially among French-speaking Protestants, as the inspirer of a “theology of experience or consciousness” (Gétaz), and as an advocate of the separation of State and Church.
protest. de la Suisse Romande, in Studia Friburg., Friburgo 1940; Ph. Bridel, La pensée de V., Losanna 1944; for relations with French culture, E. Scillère, A. V., historien de la pensée française, Parigi 1923. Ettore Passerin