Download Along Comes Calvin Martin Luther wasn`t the last word in Church

Along Comes Calvin
Martin Luther wasn’t the last word in Church reformers. Also in the sixteenth century, a young
fellow from France moved to Switzerland and shared Protestant teachings that resulted in widespread changes. His name was John Calvin.
Reforming the Swiss church
The Reformation in Switzerland started about the same time it did in Germany and in much the
same way. In 1518, a priest named Huldreich Zwingli opposed the selling of indulgences.
As in Germany, fighting broke out over the reform movement. Zwingli, unlike Luther, was in the
thick of the violence; he died in battle near Kappel, Switzerland, in 1531. Like the Holy Roman
Empire, Switzerland was a confederation of smaller states (the Swiss called them cantons).
Protestantism eventually won official recognition, meaning that the rulers of the cantons were
allowed to decide which brand of Christianity to follow.
Establishing Puritanism
Calvin was a brilliant Classics scholar at the University of Paris when the Reformation began. He
was steeped in Greek and Roman philosophy as well as Christian theology. (Those Greeks keep
popping up, don’t they?) His thinking reached back to St. Augustine’s Christian version of
Platonic thought, which is built on the idea that humanity is a false and corrupt shadow of God’s
perfect Idea. Like Augustine, Calvin thought people are bad and have been so ever since Adam
and Eve sinned. In the 1530s, John Calvin, diverged from the Lutherans over the concept of
predestination and created the Reformed branch of Protestantism.
But Calvin agreed with Luther that God is merciful. Instead of condemning everybody to Hell,
God chooses to save some.
This type of thinking put Calvin at odds with his peers in France. University scholars in Paris had
no patience for Reformation ideas, so Calvin left and headed for Switzerland. Before long, he
was invited to teach reform theology in Geneva. His ideas became the basis of what’s called
Calvinism or Puritanism. Calvin set them down in an influential 1536 book called Institutes of
the Christian Religion.
Calvin went much farther than Luther in embracing predestination. Although Calvin supported
Luther’s idea that good works alone can’t win salvation, he dissented regarding the importance
of faith in securing a place in heaven. Calvin thought that God decides each person’s salvation
or damnation at the beginning of creation. Nothing you do or believe influences whether you’ll
be saved or damned.
But predestination didn’t mean that you could do anything you wanted, according to Calvin. He
taught that in order to live a godly life, you must be vigilant and strict. It isn’t to win God’s favor
or reap a reward, because Calvin’s God doesn’t bargain. But if you believe, you have the
opportunity and obligation to act on that belief.
Calvin’s followers had to watch for every sort of sin and be ready to cast the unworthy out of
their church. Those who crossed the Reformed church could be exiled or tortured to death.
Geneva, once a wide-open party town, became a place where you could be punished for singing
a dirty song or even wearing clothes that were too colorful.
The Puritans disapproved of feasts. They banned dancing and thought the theater sinful. They
believed in hard work, thrift, and honesty. By working hard and practicing thrift, many Calvinists
prospered, and some even became wealthy, which contributed to the prosperity and security of
Switzerland itself. Well-heeled Puritans also shared their wealth with the Calvinist church,
adding to its growth and influence.
Calvin’s ideas were so strict that more-liberal Genevans initially resisted and even threw him out
of town. But Calvin returned, and by the time he died in 1564, Geneva was considered Calvin’s
town, a Puritan town. His critics called him “the Pope of Geneva.”
Puritanism soon became influential in other parts of the world as well, as the following sections
illustrate.
Causing turmoil in France
Because John Calvin came from France, it seems right that his teachings returned there.
Ministers from Geneva spread the word, but as had happened with the Reformation in the Holy
Roman Empire and in Switzerland, some French nobles broke with Catholicism for reasons that
were more political than religious. They clashed with Catholic rivals. The conflict erupted into
armed violence in 1562, with intermittent fighting taking the form of nine separate French Wars
of Religion over the next 36 years.
The French royal family saw the French Calvinists, or Huguenots, as a threat. The Huguenots
suffered severe persecution. King Henry II, who came to power in 1547, wanted to kill every
Protestant in France and the Netherlands. His sons Charles IV and Henry III continued this
policy. Before he became king, Henry III was among the soldiers who slaughtered 50,000
Huguenots at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572.
It wasn’t until Henry IV gained France’s throne in 1598 that the country settled down. Henry IV
had been a Calvinist, but he had to become Catholic in order to rule. He still liked the
Huguenots, however, and he gave them forts from which to fend off attacks.
Sparking rebellion in Holland
Calvinism caught on in the northern Netherlands, called Holland. This development didn’t sit
well with the king of Spain, Phillip II, who also ruled that country (inherited from his dad, Holy
Roman Emperor Charles V).
While the southern Netherlands remained Catholic and Spanish, the Calvinist north broke free in
1608 and became the United Provinces.
The Calvinist teachings of hard work and thrift helped push the Dutch to successes in navigation
and trade. They excelled as merchants and colonists through the seventeenth century.
Weakening the Holy Roman Empire
By 1618, both Protestantism and Catholicism had changed. Militant Calvinism infused the
Lutheran movement. Catholicism, through a reform movement called the Counter-Reformation,
had managed to reinvigorate itself.
Protestants and Catholics clashed again in the last big religious war of the Reformation, the
Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). It broke out after the Protestants in Bohemia tried to appoint a
Protestant king in place of the Catholic emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
Emperor Mathias sent forces to oppose the Bohemian Protestants. German Catholic states waded
in behind the empire. Protestant states backed the Bohemians. Spain, still ruled by Hapsburg
cousins of the emperor, sent soldiers to help him, and the Catholics got the upper hand.
But then in marched the Swedes on the Protestant side, commanded by King Gustavus Adolphus.
The Protestants were on top until Gustavus died in battle. Then the Catholics were poised for
victory — except that one more country was about to enter the war.
It was Catholic France. Did this mean the end for the Protestants? Well, not exactly. France
under Louis XIII and his top government minister Cardinal Richelieu (that’s right, a high official
of the Roman Catholic Church) got into this conflict on the Protestant side.
Richelieu’s interest was France’s security. He mobilized against the Hapsburg family — rulers
of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain — to keep them from getting too powerful. (See how
“religious” this war was?)
French troops helped secure the Peace of Westphalia, ending the war in 1648. After decades of
fighting, Germany was an economic wreck. Spain was bankrupt; fighting the Reformation sent it
into a long decline.
In retrospect, it would have been better to let the Bohemians have their Protestant king.
Puritanism in England and Scotland
As Calvinist teachings caught on in England, some people there wanted to make Puritanism part
of the Church of England. This movement eventually led to the English Civil War in 1642, the
execution of King Charles I, and the establishment of the Protectorate — a government of
and by the Puritans.
Scotsman John Knox (1523–1572) was a Catholic priest who became a Lutheran and came under
Calvin’s influence during the time that he spent in Geneva.
Knox founded the Church of Scotland in 1560. The Scottish Calvinists, called Presbyterians,
organized their worship and religious authority after the Swiss model, but they faced a powerful
critic in King James VI. He hated Puritanism and installed bishops in the Scottish Church. James
VI became King James I of England in 1603 and thus the head of the Church of England.
Emigrating to America
The Pilgrims who came from England to North America onboard the Mayflower, landing at
Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, in 1620, were called Separatists. They broke away from the
Church of England so that they could freely observe their Calvinist beliefs. They were soon
followed by somewhat less radical Puritans, who would have preferred to stay within the English
church but make it more Calvinist. In New England, the two groups became virtually
indistinguishable.
Considered founders of American society, these people adhered to a highly moralistic brand of
Christianity — not unlike the rigorous Calvinism practiced in Geneva — and shaped social
attitudes and civil policy for centuries.
New England Puritans earned notoriety for labeling certain women as witches and persecuting
and killing them. This practice wasn’t exclusive to America, Puritans, or even Protestants.
Catholics burned witches throughout medieval times. The judgmental strictures of Calvinism,
however, tended to encourage this kind of thing. Scottish Presbyterians were also especially
strident in their witch hunts.