Posted on 06/30/2009 7:36:37 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
BOSTON, June 30 /Christian Newswire/ -- As America prepares to celebrate Independence Day this July 4, Vision Forum Ministries will be hosting a national celebration to honor the 500th birthday of John Calvin, a man who many scholars recognize as America's "Founding Father." The event -- The Reformation 500 Celebration -- will take place July 1-4 at the Park Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston. More than a thousand attendees are expected to gather for the four-day conference.
"Long before America declared its independence, John Calvin declared and defended principles that birthed liberty in the modern world," noted Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum Ministries. "Scholars both critical and sympathetic of the life and theology of Calvin agree on one thing: that this reformer from Geneva was the father of modern liberty as well as the intellectual founding father of America."
"Jean Jacques Rousseau, a fellow Genevan who was no friend to Christianity, observed: 'Those who consider Calvin only as a theologian fail to recognize the breadth of his genius. The editing of our wise laws, in which he had a large share, does him as much credit as his Institutes. . . . [S]o long as the love of country and liberty is not extinct amongst us, the memory of this great man will be held in reverence.'
German historian Leopold von Ranke observed that 'Calvin was virtually the founder of America.' Harvard historian George Bancroft was no less direct with this remark: 'He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.'
"John Adams, America's second president, agreed with this sentiment and issued this pointed charge: 'Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it much respect.'
"As we celebrate America's Independence this July 4, we would do well to heed John Adams' admonition and show due respect to the memory of John Calvin whose 500th birthday fall six days later," Phillips stated.
Calvin, a convert to Reformation Christianity born in Noyon, France, on July 10, 1509, is best known for his influence on the city of Geneva. It was there that he modeled many of the principles of liberty later embraced by America's Founders, including anti-statism, the belief in transcendent principles of law as the foundation of an ethical legal system, free market economics, decentralized authority, an educated citizenry as a safeguard against tyranny, and republican representative government which was accountable to the people and a higher law.
The Reformation 500 Celebration will honor Calvin's legacy, along with other key Protestant reformers, and will feature more than thirty history messages on the impact of the Reformation, Faith & Freedom mini-tours of historic Boston, and a Children's Parade. The festivities will climax on America's Independence Day as attendees join thousands of others for the world-renowned music and fireworks celebration on the Esplanade with the Boston Pops Orchestra.
To learn more about the Reformation 500 Celebration click here. To interview Doug Phillips regarding Calvin's influence on America, contact Wesley Strackbein by e-mail at press@visionforum.org or by phone at (210) 340-5250, ext. 222.
"John Adams, America's second president, agreed with this sentiment and issued this pointed charge: 'Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it much respect.'
"As we celebrate America's Independence this July 4, we would do well to heed John Adams' admonition and show due respect to the memory of John Calvin whose 500th birthday fall six days later," Phillips stated.
Who are they kidding? John Calvin’s dictatorship of the elect in Geneva was the very antithesis of what America was founded upon. Our First Amendment was written so as to prevent people like Calvin from having the influence that they had had elsewhere in nations with established churches.
You want the catalysts of religious liberty in America? Look to the Baptists like Shubal Stearns and John Leland.
Although he was influential with some of the founders, it is a real stretch to call Calvin a Founding Father. He was but one star on a panoply that included Aristotle, Plato, Cincinnatus , Tacitus, Hobbes, Aquinas, Locke, and Rousseau. In fact it was the Catholics among the founders that ensured that the First Amendment contained the freedom of religion clauses.
While I can certainly understand the Catholic interest in not being lorded over by an Anglican or Congregationalist state-church, the Catholics were not directly instrumental in effecting the First Amendment. The Baptists were, through the influence they had on Jefferson and Madison via men like John Leland and other Virginia Baptists.
Wow, John Calvin was a dictator? My brother said that when the Messiah returns, His government, too, will be a dictatorship. Interesting. I will have to delve into Calvin’s rule over Geneva, since I am really looking forward to true world peace.
You need to become much more familiar with the Carroll family of Maryland. (Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence).
At the time he signed the Declaration, it was against the law for a Catholic, both in England and in the colonies, to hold public office or to vote. Although Maryland was founded by and for Catholics in 1634, in 1649 and, later, in 1689 after the “Glorious Revolution” placed severe restrictions on Catholics in England, the laws were changed in Maryland and the rest of the colonies, and Catholicism was repressed.
Catholics could no longer hold office, exercise the franchise, educate their children in their faith, or worship in public. With the Declaration of Independence, all this bias and restriction ended. It was a condition of ratification by the Maryland delegation lead by Charles and his cousin's Daniel and John.
“History is eloquent in declaring that on a people’s religion ever depends their freedom or their bondage.”
“..In striking contrast with these democratic and republican tendencies which are found to be inherent in the Reformed Faith we find that Arminianism has a very pronounced aristocratic tendency. In the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches the elder votes in Presbytery or Synod or General Assembly on full equality with his pastor; but in Arminian churches the power is largely in the hands of the clergy, and the laymen have very little real authority. ...”
“The despotic rulers of former days ... claiming the divine right of kings, feared Calvinism as republicanism itself.”
“We may say that the spiritual republic which was founded by Calvin rests upon four basic principles. These have been summed up by an eminent English statesman and jurist, Sir James Stephen, as follows: [snip]
Continue here: Calvinism in History: Calvinism and Representative Government by Loraine Boettner:
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/calvinism-history/history.htm
When one studies the history of New Testament “church government”, one can readily see that the bottom-up, checks and balances, Republican form of limited government that America’s Calvinist Framers gave us, is based straight out of the New Testament CHURCH GOVERNMENT example. [Acts 6:3; 1:15, 22, 23, 25; 2Cor.8:19, etc.]
Paul, Barnabus and Titus are shown as installing the elders that were chosen by the congregations [Acts 6:3-6; 14:23 and Titus 1:5].
Paul says to the whole church congregation: “Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom whom we may appoint to this duty.” (of servant aka deacon)
Emory Report 11/29/99 Vol.52. No. 13 Excerpt:
“...Marci Hamilton ... [is] a nationally recognized expert on constitutional and copyright law. ....
Her forthcoming book, Copyright and the Constitution, examines the historical and philosophical underpinnings of copyright law and asserts that the American “copyright regime” is grounded in Calvinism, resulting in a philosophy that favors the product over the producer.
Calvinism? Hamilton’s interest in the intersection of Calvinist theology and political philosophy emerged early in her career when she began reading the work of leading constitutional law scholars. She was puzzled by their “theme of a system of self-rule.” “They talked about it as if it were in existence,” she said. “My gut reaction was that direct democracy and self-rule are a myth that doesn’t really exist.”
What Hamilton found was that a “deep and abiding distrust of human motives that permeates Calvinist theology also permeates the Constitution.” Her investigation of that issue has led to another forthcoming book, tentatively titled The Reformed Constitution: What the Framers Meant by Representation.
That our country’s form of government is a republic instead of a pure democracy is no accident, according to Hamilton. The constitutional framers “expressly rejected direct democracy. Instead, the Constitution constructs a representative system of government that places all ruling power in the hands of elected officials.”
And the people? Their power is limited to the voting booth and communication with their elected representatives, she said.
“The Constitution is not built on faith in the people, but rather on distrust of all social entities, including the people.” ...
..Two of the most important framers, James Wilson and James Madison, were steeped in Presbyterian precepts.
It is Calvinism, Hamilton argued, that “more than any other Protestant theology, brings together the seeming paradox that man’s will is corrupt by nature but also capable of doing good.”
In other words, Calvinism holds that “we can hope for the best but expect the worst from each other and from the social institutions humans devise.”
“Neither Calvin nor the framers stop at distrust, however,” Hamilton said. “They also embrace an extraordinary theology of hope. The framers, like Calvin, were reformers.” ~ Elaine Justice
The 55 Framers (from North to South):
John Langdon, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nicholas Gilman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Elbridge Gerry, Episcoplian (Calvinist)
Rufus King, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Caleb Strong, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nathaniel Gorham, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Roger Sherman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Samuel Johnson, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Oliver Ellsworth, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Alexander Hamilton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Lansing, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
Robert Yates, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
William Patterson, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
William Livingston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jonathan Dayton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
David Brearly, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Churchill Houston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Benjamin Franklin, Christian in his youth, Deist in later years, then back to his Puritan background in his old age (his June 28, 1787 prayer at the Constitutional Convention was from no “Deist”)
Robert Morris, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
James Wilson, probably a Deist
Gouverneur Morris, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas Mifflin, Lutheran (Calvinist-lite)
George Clymer, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas FitzSimmons, Roman Catholic
Jared Ingersoll, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
John Dickinson, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Read, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Richard Bassett, Methodist
Gunning Bedford, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jacob Broom, Lutheran
Luther Martin, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Daniel Carroll, Roman Catholic
John Francis Mercer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McHenry, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Daniel of St Thomas Jennifer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Washington, Episcopalian (Calvinist; no, he was not a deist)
James Madison, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Mason, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Edmund Jennings Randolph, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James Blair, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McClung, ?
George Wythe, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Richardson Davie, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Hugh Williamson, Presbyterian, possibly later became a Deist
William Blount, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Alexander Martin, Presbyterian/Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Rutledge, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, III, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Abraham Baldwin, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Leigh Pierce, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Houstoun, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Few, Methodist
NOTE: Historic Protestant, Episcopalian doctrine is Reformed and Calvinistic. The Episcopalian church that adheres to its historic doctrine is still Reformed in the United States.
“Calvinism prevailed in England since it was the theology behind the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) of the Church of England” (Paul Enns, *Moody Handbook of Theology*. Chicago: Moody Press, 1989), p. 476.
The Episcopalians held as their subordinate standards the 39 Articles of Religion. This confession is Calvinistic in emphasis.
During that historic period, not only the 39 Articles of Religion (”Episcopalians”), but whenever you read of the Waldensians, the Bohemian Brethren (in Poland), the Huguenots, you’re reading of churches that were Calvinistic.
Calvin’s influence in New England still haunts us today. His religious philosophy of elitism and idealistic pessimism runs counter to Red State America’s realistic optimism.
One of the influential writings of early Calvinist Puritans, was the poem ‘The Day of Doom’, by clergyman Michael Wigglesworth.
The Day of Doom was a religious poem that became a best-selling classic in Puritan New England for a century after it was published in 1662. The poem describes the Day of Judgment, in which a vengeful God sentences sinners (including, by Puritan theology, unbaptized infants) to punishment in hell. So popular was the work that no first or second editions exist because they were thumbed to shreds.
The poem is a “doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology”, according to the anthology, Colonial Prose and Poetry (1903), that “attained immediately a phenomenal popularity. Eighteen hundred copies were sold within a year, and for the next century it held a secure place in New England Puritan households”.
According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature (Volume 1), “about one out of every twenty persons in New England bought it”. As late as 1828 it was stated that many aged persons were still alive who could repeat it, as it had been taught them with their catechism; and the more widely one reads in the voluminous sermons of that generation, the more fair will its representation of prevailing theology in New England appear.”
An excerpt from the poem:
They cry, they roar for the anguish sore,
and gnaw their tongues for horrour.
But get away without delay,
Christ Pitties not your cry:
Depart to Hell, there may you yell
and roar Eternally.
(Note, the entire text is available online.)
In short, at the end of the world, *groups* of people, not individuals, appear before a severe and stern Jesus, likely sitting on a hard, wooden chair, as a Calvinist judge. Group after group are condemned to Hell without mercy, with only the wealthy elite of Calvinist New England spared for heaven.
Among the more unpleasant doctrines of Calvinism were that the wealthy are wealthy because they are favored by God, and the poor are poor because they are despised. Unbaptized infants, suicides and other sinners are *irredeemably* condemned to Hell. Corporal and other punishments, approaching what today we would call “torture”, are commonplace for petty offenses.
These are the people we associate with the scarlet letter and the burning of witches.
Today, the attitudes of Calvinism still haunt our federal corridors of power. Elitists enjoy it, because it recognizes their self-appointed status of elite, and applauds them for it. In a bizarre form of cultural ecumenism, today even other religions in New England have adopted some of Calvinisms doctrines and theories, however unintentionally.
Not the religion, but the elitism, and bitter idealistic pessimism.
Well, he did influence the Walloons and the Huguenots who came here early and founded cities...
Joyeux anniversaire, Jean Cauvin...
At the time he signed the Declaration, it was against the law for a Catholic, both in England and in the colonies, to hold public office or to vote. Although Maryland was founded by and for Catholics in 1634, in 1649 and, later, in 1689 after the “Glorious Revolution” placed severe restrictions on Catholics in England, the laws were changed in Maryland and the rest of the colonies, and Catholicism was repressed.
Catholics could no longer hold office, exercise the franchise, educate their children in their faith, or worship in public. With the Declaration of Independence, all this bias and restriction ended. It was a condition of ratification by the Maryland delegation lead by Charles and his cousin's Daniel and John.
I am aware of the role that the Carroll's played in our countries founding, and I assure you, my comments above are not meant to denigrate them in the least. Nevertheless, the reason we have the First Amendment as it is is largely because of the influence which Leland and other Virginia Baptists had on Jefferson and Madison as far as urging for religious liberty, rather than mere toleration, is concerned.
You know those preachers in colonial times who you read about being fined, assized, imprisoned, whipped, and even killed for preaching the Gospel? In nearly all cases, those were Baptist preachers. The Baptists at this time - both in England and in the colonies - were just as persecuted by the Anglican and Congregationalist authorities as were the Catholics. The Baptists were the ones who urged several key Founders to include true religious liberty into our Bill of Rights.
In a theocratic sense, yes. Granted, Geneva was ruled by a "council", which leads many to mistake it for a "republican" government in the same sense that the USA has a republican form of government - and to be sure, in this age of increasingly absolute monarchy, Geneva was likely more free in many ways than was, say, France or Spain. However, if one wanted true republicanism and a closer approximation to what we would consider "free, consensual government" in this time period, one would be wiser to look to the Dutch Republic or to Venice, instead of Geneva.
Calvin was the power behind the council, and while he governed Geneva, the city was basically a theocracy where church attendance each Sunday was "strongly encouraged", anything that Calvin and the council disapproved of was outlawed, where Anabaptists and other religious dissenters were persecuted, and prominent heretics like Michael Servetus were burned at the stake. Eventually, even Calvin's own council in Geneva got tired of his religious bullying and ran him out of town.
So no, Calvin wasn't a shining beacon of religious liberty or freedom. Yes, Servetus was a heretic who denied the Trinity, but nevertheless, real religious liberty - you know, like what our Founders established in the Bill of Rights - protects the religious expressions even of people whose religion we don't agree with. Calvin cannot by any stretch of the imagination be credibly called a "founder" of American liberty, especially our religious liberty.
And while it is true that the Lord Jesus Christ's reign on earth will be absolute, there's one slight difference in our comparisons - John Calvin was not Jesus Christ. While I would trust the perfect, ever-living Son of God to rule and reign absolutely, I would not trust John Calvin or any other mere man to do so.
St. Augustine, Florida St. Augustine, Florida was founded by the Spanish in 1565; 42 years before the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The first Christian worship service held in a permanent settlement in the continental United States was a Catholic Mass celebrated in St. Augustine in 1565.
Also: Auriesville, NY The National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, also dedicated as the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, is a Roman Catholic shrine in Auriesville, New York dedicated to the Jesuit missionaries who were martyred at the Mohawk Indian village of Ossernenon between 1642 and 1646. The first recitation of the Rosary in what is now New York State took place at the the site on September 29, 1642.
It's a shame the Puritans apparently never read Romans Chapter 7, in which at one point Paul says he was alive without the law, after which sin revived, and he died. In other words, there was a point, when he was too young to understand the law of God or that he was a sinner, and apparently was not then accountable for his sin. Only later, upon becoming intellectually mature enough to understand his sin, did he become accountable for it.
Perfect!
That explains why America is failing in less than a mere 300 years.
Well, only indirectly. By the time of the Revolution, the New England Puritans had morphed into Yankees. and an Arminian named John Wesley better represented the thinking of American Christians than Calvin. Let’s say he was the great-grandfather of America.
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