| abstract |
Calvin never failed to stir controversy; his pen never dipped a second time into the inkwell before issues were raised and battle lines were drawn in the theological
sand. His ideas about God and scripture are critiqued and debated among theologians; engaged by historians and sociologists as well as preached by clergy well into
the twenty-first century. But with all that scholarly discourse, Calvin's world-changing influence on western civilization, arguably the real story, seems to go
largely unnoticed and unrealized. Yet it shaped the colonies of the new world, framed thinking as the founding fathers authored the Constitution of the United States,
affected society's views about slavery leading into the American Civil War, and today pulls the strings from behind the curtain of culture making science, the arts,
academia, the media, entertainment, religion, and the rule of governments all over the world dance, like so many marionettes in a children's puppet show. Calvin's
distinctive theological ideas seemed to have a unique propensity to evoke cultural and linguistic absolutes often leading to extremisms in their applications, perhaps
in ways that Calvin himself never intended. These distorted extremes created a sort of cultural rainbow overarching societal skies in Europe, spreading to the United
States, and through America's influence, now extend around the world. Yet few bother to look up to take notice of the sociological colors above them, let alone respond
to them. Comprehending the veracity then of such declaratives, will be realized in this treatise by tracing an anthropological lineage of John Calvin's unique view
of theology that has been culturally sown into the societal fabric of Europe and even more in the United States; assimilating religion, the economy, politics,
government, education, the arts, and the sciences; uncovering his influence in evangelical Christianity, frequently perceived as conflicted, judgmental, condescending,
and overbearing by certain secularized segments of society who arguably and ironically spawn their critiques via the same religious Calvinistic extremism they espouse
to despise, simply rebranded and masked as non-religious and secular.
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