VINET, ALEXANDRE. — Liberal Protestant apologist and writer, b. at Ouchy (Lausanne) June 17, 1797, d. at Lausanne May 10, 1847.
He received a somewhat superficial theological training at the Académie of Lausanne, and then taught French language and literature for several years at Basel, later accepting pastoral duties as well. Influenced by De Wette, the philologist and theologian close to Schleiermacher, and then by the currents of the Protestant Réveil and the works of Thomas Erskine, he gradually moved away from the orthodoxy of the formulas and worship of the national Church to which he belonged, ultimately rejecting the Helvetic Confession of Faith and founding a “Free Church” in Lausanne in the very year of his death. He enjoyed a wide following especially among French-speaking Protestants as an inspirer of a “theology of experience or of conscience” (Gétaz) and as an advocate of the separation of Church and State.