42 - International Calvinism

Summary

It is well known that the Reformed Church spread farther and faster than any of the other Protestant reformations, expanding to various Swiss cities, France, the Netherlands, the British Isles, much of the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, and Poland-Lithuania during Calvin’s own lifetime or shortly after his death in 1564. And in the seventeenth century it flourished even farther afield, expanding permanently to North America and southern Africa. Moreover, much of this growth and expansion was directly tied to a larger narrative of persecution, emigration, and refuge. But to refer to this phenomenal growth as the creation of international Calvinism conceals as much as it reveals. For one thing, we might better speak of international Calvinisms in the plural, as it was hardly the same church that was exported across much of western and central Europe and then the globe. As other chapters in this volume explain very explicitly, the Reformed religion had to adapt and restyle itself virtually everywhere it went to survive in very different political, economic, and sociocultural climates. For another, international Calvinism had no Calvinist international, either institutionally or structurally, to foster and maintain close and permanent relations among the various Reformed churches. This was hardly surprising given Calvin’s own inclination that each church should be self-governing. So, what, then, can we mean by the term international Calvinism?