Preserving the Reformation

This initial message in a series to commemorate the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth serves as a preview of that which the rest of the series will address. It is a call to revisit the actual historical person called John Calvin and to reject the caricature of him that many people now have learned to accept as the true depiction of Calvin's life and character. This message makes the case for the idea that Calvin has been described rightly as the most influential person in the second millennium of the Christian era. Without his brilliant and heroic labors, the benefits of the Protestant Reformation would almost certainly have been lost to succeeding generations and the foundation for the concept of liberty and republican government would never have been laid. The founders of the United States of America recognized that Calvin's contributions to the establishment of a constitutional republic were fundamental. It is, then, no stretch of the truth to say that without John Calvin, there would be no America.