Calvin Saw this Coming

July 10, 2009 will mark the 500th anniversary of Protestant Reformer John Calvin's birth. If you'd like to contribute a short piece honoring Calvin for this blog that week, please let us know (either by leaving a comment here or clicking on the "suggest comment for discussion" link at right).

Kicking off the celebration a little early, USA Today ran an opinion piece last week called "Calvin saw this coming: The Protestant Reformer, born 500 years ago, could teach us a thing or two about fiscal idolatry, diplomacy and democracy. But would we listen?" The author of the article is Henry G. Brinton, pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church, PC(USA) in Virgina and author of Balancing Acts: Obligation, Liberation, and Contemporary Christian Conflicts.

It's an interesting article, and worth a quick read, I think. Although I'm not entirely comfortable presupposing Calvin's responses to current world events, I did enjoy seeing quotes from Calvin and various scholars applied to a modern context.

"In ethics, Calvin was not comfortable making sharp pronouncements about good and evil. Political talk about and 'evil empire' or an 'axis of evil' would have struck him as overly simplistic, since he believed that sin corrupts every person, community, and nation on earth. He realized that all people were good and valuable, but also distorted and dangerous."

Sidenote: Yesterday was our last day of Sunday School for the year, and my small group discussion class finished up 8 months of marriage enrichment using Adam Hamilton's Making Love Last a Lifetime: Biblical Perspectives on Love, Marriage, and Sex. For next fall we've chosen another Hamilton book, Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White. Brinton's book sounds interesting, and might inform our discussions. I'll definitely be checking it out for the fall.