[BlueDragon]

Go back to #88? Why be so cagey? There was nothing there that initiates the wide range of issues you wish to somehow tie into this thread, entitled John Calvin was America’s ’Founding Father’ [Presbyterian Rebellion Day] unless it be my own brief mention of unless one wants to look upon it as continuation of the religious wars in Europe or something to that effect.

Looking at that lengthy list of other "items" you have brought up, I can't help but to think that is some form of attempt to drag the discussion which has been going on here ~ off into the bushes.

It's an age-old debating tactic, but highly transparent.

Looks like you could start about four threads there at least. Maybe you could ping all your buddies and get a real hate-them-Calvinists-they-are-the-cause-of-all-ills hatefest going? Ya'll have fun, but no thanks, (unless there were a lot of good links leading to interesting reading, heheh...)

[Cronos]

Of course, you bring up the huguenot terrorists and then ask why I did?

incredible -- were you destined to ask that?

Read my first post

I don't agree with this reformer from Geneva was the father of modern liberty as well as the intellectual founding father of America, -- that's hyperbole. Yes, Calvin's revolt against rulers (perhaps in tune with Swiss concepts) had an impact on the French and American revolutions, but the father or founding father? No.

Also, Religious liberty owes it much respect is false -- Geneva was as merciless in rooting out those who didn't follow it's state religion as Lutherans or Catholics were.

if we talk about religious liberty, later Anglicanism has a higher position, but only from the 1800s.

Rather, I would put the concept of religious liberty to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (and no, this was not because the Poles were Catholics) which had religious liberty for Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, Lutherans, Muslims, Armenian Orthodox, Unitarians and Calvinists too --> the Calvinists did compromise their position by supporting the invading Swedes during the Potop. This resulted in a sharp decline of Calvinism after the Swedes were kicked out -- not due to government pressure so much as people leaving a "foreign influence". Lutheranism wasn't seen as supporting foreigners so much either

Anyway, I digress -- Calvinism was not associated with civil liberty in the 1700s, neither was Catholicism or Orthodoxy or Lutheranism or Anglicanism. Mennonites yes, but they weren't associated with any nation state.

[Cronos]

Of course, you bring up the huguenot terrorists and then ask why I did?

incredible -- were you destined to ask that?

Read my third post

Reformation-era Europe should NOT be read purely in the context of religion. For instance the 30 years war in Germany. That seems on the outset to be Catholic v/s Lutheran, but then one sees that Catholic France was fighting alongside Protestants???

Then one sees Lutheran princelings crushing baptist etc. serfs

What was going on?

You cannot read this without reading how the Holy Roman Empire was Catholic and the little Lords, Dukes etc. in northern Europe used the Reformation to declare their independence

you cannot read it without reading how France used the opportunity to weaken the Holy Roman Empire (i.e. how West Francia stole a march over East Francia) and how the Turks used this European turmoil to their own advantage

[Cronos]

And, finally, to prove that a person like Calvin who set up a police state was no American founding father, I noted the book : Stephen Hick's "John Calvin's Geneva

The city-state of Geneva was in effect, a police state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over all, John Calvin....

Frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered. The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “asses,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No evidence was produced, but he was tortured day and night for a month till he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. Penultimately, his feet were nailed to the wood; ultimately he was decapitated.

1. Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
2. Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite
3. A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
4. Calvin's Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."

Sources quoted in Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, vol. 8:

• "The death penalty against heresy, idolatry and blasphemy and barbarous customs of torture were retained. Attendance at public worship was commanded on penalty of three sols. Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment."

• Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing.

• A man was banished from the city for three months because on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly 'He prays a beautiful psalm.'

• A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: 'This is the best Psalter.'

• Three men who laughed during a sermon were imprisoned for three days.

• Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes.

• A man who swore by the 'body and blood of Christ' was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square.

• A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil.

• A girl was beheaded for striking her parents.

• A banker was executed for repeated adultery.

• A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham.

• Men and women were burnt to death for witchcraft. (See Pike, pp. 55,56).

From Other Sources:

• Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).

• Martin Luther said of Calvin's actions in Geneva, "With a death sentence they solve all argumentation" (Juergan L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I, p. 285).

• "About the month of January 1546, a member of the Little Council, Pierre Ameaux, asserted that Calvin was nothing but a wicked man - who was preaching false doctrine. Calvin felt that his authority as an interpreter of the Word of God was being attacked: he so completely identified his own ministry with the will of God that he considered Ameaux's words as an insult to the honour of Christ. The Magistrates offered to make the culprit beg Calvin's pardon on bended knees before the Council of the Two Hundred, but Calvin found this insufficient. On April 8, Ameaux was sentenced to walk all round the town, dressed only in a shirt, bareheaded and carrying a lighted torch in his hand, and after that to present himself before the tribunal and cry to God for mercy" (F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 85, 86).

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" James 3:11.

NOTE: he was as bad as anyone else in his day. He was no "liberator".

[Cronos]

And to which you in #88 jump topic (note the topic is about Calvin the bloodthirsty and how he could not be a "founding Father" of the US)

Let's see what you talk about:

1. Huguenots
2. Spanish-French wars
3. Spanish attacks on their enemy, the French

to which I replied how much of this was purely religious and how much of it was purely political? the Spanish have no love for the French even then -- and the French were trying to muscle in on what Spain considered THEIRS, the Americas

Secondly, note what you yourself posted launching a surprise dawn attack on the Fort Caroline garrison-> an attack on a garrison. This was war

Where was Philip threated by Protestantism? In the Netherlands where there was the 100 years war in which the Flemish (Dutch and northern Belgians) were fighting to be separated from Habsburg domination. The differences were political, regional, cultural and by accepting calvinism, it added another separation between the two peoples.

[Cronos]

Finally, discussing the traitorous Huguenots, did you know that the name is derived from the term applied in France to those conspirators (all of them aristocratic members of the Reformed Church) involved in the Amboise plot of 1560: a foiled attempt to transfer power in France from the influential House of Guise?

So, just like the Dim elite they wanted to replace government with their own police state

The huguenots were the rebels against conservatives, with attacks on Churchs in 1560 and an attempt by CAlvinists to kidnap the King Francis II

[BlueDragon]

Sorry for the previous ping, Alex. I mistakenly thought this was your thread.