The Geneva Convention

The Christian blogosphere is drowning in a sea of Calvin posts. It’s his 500th birthday around now – depending on where you are on the planet. We’re taking things back to Geneva tomorrow at church as we “celebrate” the milestone.

I don’t have much to add – except to say that I’m putting the finishing touches on my “novella” on Calvin’s life for our conference tomorrow. My topic deals with Calvin and Servetus – a heretic killed on his watch (but not, as some would suggest, by him).

Heretics were killed back then. There was a very blurry separation of church and state, and heresy was a destabilising political force. It’s hard to reconcile the actions with our current system of government and our religious freedoms – but there wasn’t really much choice in those days.

Calvin had a hand in significant political reform too – helping move a number of theologically reformed countries towards more “democratic” systems of government.

Challies.com has a great article on the episode and I commend it to you – if you can’t be bothered reading all that, and you’re in Townsville, come along to the conference tomorrow afternoon at Willows.

I’m going to use the word antidisestablishmentarianism in my talk too – that should be a real highlight. I’m all about brevity and concise communication…

I’ll share a bunch of Calvin links for you all to enjoy in tomorrow’s link post. Huzzah.