Book Thoughts: Calvin and Zwingli

I’ve spent most of this fall with the Swiss reformers John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli.

Sometimes when I read a biography of a thinker, I get a new appreciation for their ideas. Situating them in the actual life and time they were born in gives them a vitality you can’t get from Wikipedia.

That did not happen with these two. I’m not sure how much of that is the author, who doesn’t seem particularly interested in the theological minutiae of the early reformation, and how much is the sources, who mostly kick in when the men have already developed their ideas rather than as they were forming them, but I didn’t come away with an appreciation for why they felt so strongly about the theological issues that seem so remote to us now. Imagine having a fight over how much art is in a church!

What I did take away from the books is an understanding for why Switzerland and the US feel so culturally similar.

Here is Gordon describing Zwingli:

His calls for religious freedom were coupled with demands for liberty from tyranny, both religious and political.

This then gets exported to England through Jean Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich. The English and Scottish reformed communities become very influential in the culture of the thirteen colonies. In a very real way, the cultural DNA of the US comes from the Swiss Alps.

One other thing that stood out: there was clearly a warmth and a charisma to the two men at the time that doesn’t translate. Both had large followings and deep relationships that inspired people to follow them through hardship. Calvin, as an example, taught lectures that were well attended and created many acolytes. They aren’t the austere caricatures that are passed down to us.

2024-11-06