To hear some people talk, you would think that the birth of freedom, democracy, and the modern world started with the Protestant Reformation. In fact, the coincidence of faith and modernity has less to do with Martin Luther than with John Calvin, the reformer who had the audacity to question the rule of bishops and substitute the authority of presbyters (elders). According to Abraham Kuyper, in his oft-quoted Lectures on Calvinism (1898), “Luther never worked out his fundamental thought.” Only with the rise of Calvinism “can it be said that [Protestantism] has consistently and logically followed out the lines of the Reformation, has established not only Churches but also States, has set its stamp upon social and public life.” For Kuyper, Calvinism went hand in hand with constitutional liberties and its effects were obvious in the political systems of countries where Reformed Protestantism had taken root, namely, England, the Netherlands, and the United States.
If Kuyper, a Reformed minister and theologian before becoming the Netherlands’ Prime Minister, was guilty of cheering for the home team, similar estimates of Calvinism come from observers on the other side. Christopher Dawson, a Roman Catholic historian, identified similar connections between Reformed Protestantism and modern politics. The Harvard professor posited that democracy emerged from “the spiritual world of Calvinism and the Free Churches.” This was completely different from the “political and social outlook” of Lutheranism.” According to Dawson, the “genius of Calvin was that of an organizer and legislator, severe, logical, and inflexible in purpose.” Consequently, Calvin, not Luther, was the one responsible for inspiring Protestantism “to dominate the world and to change society and culture.”
Assessments of the Reformation and the classical liberalism associated with John Locke and the American Founding, whether positive or negative, are numerous with assertions that Reformed Protestantism contributed—often directly—to the structures that modern governments take for granted.
The problem, however, is that in the rush to assign credit or blame, the historical record suggests a less straightforward path from the Reformation to the modern world of republics, constitutions, freedom, and democratic elections. Consider the chapter on the civil magistrate from the Westminster Confession of Faith. The ministers and theologians who wrote this statement convened at the request of the English Parliament, a body that was at war with the English king, Charles I. The movers and shakers of Parliament were fed up with arbitrary and at times tyrannical rule of the Stuart monarchy, so much so that in 1649 they executed Charles for treason. This is another way of saying that the Westminster divines met in politically charged times and at the request of legislators who could well have overturned the existing political arrangements, in ways comparable to those of the colonists in North American 125 years later. Read more»
D. G. Hart | August 29, 2022 | Modern Reformation
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