Most of the Alsatian population is Roman Catholic, but, largely because of the region's German heritage, a significant Protestant community also exists: today, the EPCAAL (a Lutheran church) is France's second largest Protestant church, also forming an administrative union (UEPAL) with the much smaller Calvinist EPRAL. Unlike the rest of France, the Local law in Alsace-Moselle still provides for to the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 and the organic articles, which provides public subsidies to the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist churches, as well as to Jewish synagogues; religion classes in one of these faiths is compulsory in public schools. This divergence in policy from the French majority is due to the region having been part of Imperial Germany when the 1905 law separating the French church and state was instituted (for a more comprehensive history, see: Alsace-Lorraine). Controversy erupts periodically on the appropriateness of this legal disposition, as well as on the exclusion of other religions from this arrangement.
Why is the Napoleonic Concordat still followed?
Imperial Germany