For the non-Calvinists or anti-Calvinists among us who may have worried that the July 4 issue of WORLD had several articles about John Calvin or that this blog featured a number of posts about the Reformer this week, be not afraid: It happens only once every 500 years. Today brings the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth—and the great theologian, even with his warts, deserves a better press than he has typically received in recent decades.

Calvin was a fallen sinner, as all of us are, but was he especially mean-spirited? He taught that God created the world out of love and loved the world so much that Christ came down from the glorious kingdom of heaven and plunged into this world’s muck. Calvin saw God as a generous giver and His mercy as an abundant resource. Jehovah’s Witnesses would later insist that heaven has room for only 144,000, but Calvin understood that God’s grace is infinite.

Did Calvin emphasize in-group harshness toward the poor and the alien? No: He wrote, “We cannot but behold our own face as it were in a glass in the person that is poor and despised . . . though he were the furthest stranger in the world. Let a Moor or a barbarian come among us, and yet inasmuch as he is a man, he brings with him a looking glass wherein we may see that he is our brother and neighbor.” Everyone is created in God’s image and worthy of respect.

Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God “meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?” He opposed any doctrine that “deprives us of the lawful fruit of God’s beneficence.”

Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God’s kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.

Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the “Protestant ethic,” with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.

Calvin’s writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by “lesser magistrates” such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (”Vindication Against Tyrants”), which emphasized the limits of power.

Would freedom ring? The English jurist Blackstone called “the power and jurisdiction of Parliament transcendent and absolute . . . sovereign and uncontrollable.” English lawyers joked that “Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man, or a man a woman.” (Some of our jurists and legislators are more ambitious.) But generation after generation of Calvinists read Vindiciae and emphasized that government must be under God. According to John Adams, its doctrines greatly influenced Americans of the 1760s and 1770s.

Calvin’s birthday comes six days after the Independence Day that owes much to his teaching. Bake a cake and know that Calvin was not against enjoying it.

RELATED ARTICLES AND VIDEO COMMENTARIES:
“America’s debt to John Calvin: The personal pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty,” by John Piper (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
“Sticking by the Bible: A 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows complex man with singular belief,” by Marvin Olasky (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
“Holiday reading: Two views of America and some worthwhile investigations of John Calvin,” by Marvin Olasky (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
Video: “Why Marvin Olasky?” by John Piper and Marvin Olasky
Video: “What Calvin teaches us about writing,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Calvin and Servetus,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Calvin and politics,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “How The King’s College expresses the Reformed worldview,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Christians as salt in the world,” by Marvin Olasky

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism and a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics
How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine
How The King’s College expresses the Reformed worldview

A video commentary by The King’s College Provost and WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics
How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?

Barack Obama last month enlisted Theodore Roosevelt in his campaign for increased governmental control of health care, arguing that TR “first called for reform nearly a century ago.” Google “Theodore Roosevelt, universal health care,” and you’ll find The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, DailyKos, and many other stalwarts of the left suggesting or claiming that Obama is carrying the Republican Roosevelt’s banner.

That’s nonsense. The propagandists take as their one piece of evidence a plank in the Progressive Party platform of 1912: “The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.”

The tip-off as to intention lies in those last four words, “adapted to American use.” Germany’s “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismark, had created in the 1880s insurance provisions for health, accidents, disability, and old age. The health service offered was local, not centralized, with employers contributing one-third of the cost and workers contributing two-thirds. The vague Progressive Party proposal was for something along those lines, and it’s hard to know more about Teddy Roosevelt’s thinking because this was not one of the issues he emphasized.

If Obama wanted to report accurately Roosevelt’s beliefs, he would start with a speech about one of TR’s favorite topics, “Deadening socialism.”

The 26th president saw governmental control of the economy as the political manifestation of covetousness. He argued that “the only permanently beneficial way in which to help any one is to help him help himself; if either private charity, or governmental action, or any form of social expression destroys the individual’s power of self-help, the gravest possible wrong is really done to the individual.”

TR also contended that socialism could be fought most successfully by applying biblical ideas about helping the poor. The greatest hope lay through “voluntary action by individuals in the form of associations,” particularly when the goal was “that most important of all forms of betterment, moral betterment—the moral betterment which usually brings material betterment in its train.” Those who truly wanted to help had to stand “against mere sentimentality, against the philanthropy and charity which are not merely insufficient but harmful.”

In response to those who thought that would-be helpers, even when naïve, should be cheered, Roosevelt argued, “I really do not know which quality is most productive of evil to mankind in the long run, hardness of heart or softness of head.” He stated that the Bible tells each of us “to stretch out his hand to a brother who stumbles. But while every man needs at times to be lifted up when he stumbles, no man can afford to let himself be carried, and it is worth no man’s while to try thus to carry someone else.”

Governmental aid to those in need, TR emphasized, should be limited and “extended very cautiously, and so far as possible only where it will not crush out healthy individual initiative.” He saw entrepreneurship as the most effective means of dealing with problems and argued that “socialists and others really do not correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form.”

Roosevelt saw governmental redistribution of wealth as a surrender to covetousness. He argued that anyone elected on such a platform “is not, and never can be, aught but an enemy of the very people he professes to befriend. . . . To break the Tenth Commandment is no more moral now than it has been for the past thirty centuries.”

In short, TR opposed both private and governmental corruption. He straightforwardly noted that “the Eighth Commandment reads: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ It does not read: ‘Thou shalt not steal from the rich man.’ It does not read: ‘Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.’ It reads simply and plainly: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’” President Obama should take that advice to heart instead of trying to twist history for his political advantage.

Washington news keeps marching in like a lion, and only the Lamb can stand against it.

Throughout the election campaign I wanted to think the best of Barack Obama. Because of his stand on abortion and other matters I opposed him, but still kept in mind a big positive: Obama as role model, showing some among our most alienated the fruits of education, hard work, and marriage.

I hoped that maybe, just maybe, a President Obama would graduate from campaign mode and apply cool rationality not just to winning votes but to strengthening our economy and America’s position around the world. That hope has evaporated.

Obama’s role model is Franklin D. Roosevelt, yet Obama evidently is not familiar with Amity Shlaes’ fine book, The Forgotten Man (“Topical Depression,” March 8, 2008). Obama says he is embracing “experimentation—if that doesn’t work, then you do something else.” Shlaes shows that what FDR called “bold, persistent experimentation” deepened and lengthened the 1930s Depression: Businesses faced with ever-changing rules didn’t know whether to invest or hunker down.

At least, though, FDR famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He tried to raise the nation’s spirits. Obama, though, has repeatedly dampened them with his self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom. Why? Well, look at what the Bush recession did for Obama: It got him elected president, and it has now given him hundreds of billions to spend pretty much as he and his appointees see fit.

If a recession offers such privileges, what about a depression? Imagine an Obama Corps with millions of workers. Imagine, if much of the nation’s wealth dissolves, the opportunity to educate children in the virtue of government requiring everyone to “share.”

Ah, isn’t there political danger here? Won’t Democrats pay at the polls in 2010 and 2012 if the economy doesn’t improve? Not if Obama and his media soulmates play it right. Already the drumbeat has begun: The problem with the stimulus bill is not pork and the power it gives to Obama to reshape America in his own image. The problem, according to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, is that the stimulus bill should have been twice as big.

Look at Newsweek’s March 2 cover story. Jonathan Alter wrote that Obama “can look successful even as hard times continue. . . . The package is so big, and stretches across so many states, that it provides him at least four years of photo ops. . . . Once these mental pieces are fastened in place and we’re fully ‘in recovery,’ to use therapy lingo, the enduring problems won’t seem so terrifying anymore. . . . The longer the recession lasts, the more points Obama will put on the board. . . . Obama will likely package and sell health-care reform, a new energy policy and even national service as ‘recovery and reinvestment.’”

Obama has billions of reasons to keep us in a state of crisis. Every time through the end of February that Obama opened his mouth, the stock market went down: Accidental? One equities manager, Peter Kenny, explained an afternoon decline on Feb. 25: “As we came close to the bell we got the curveball: our president came on TV.”

Some evangelicals are responding to Obamania by heading to the hills: Y2K hysteria in 1999 was a false alarm but this new administration is a four-alarm fire. Maybe, but if you’re tempted that way, read one of the Bible’s great history chapters, Hebrews 11, and then its conclusion in chapter 12: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus. . . . Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

Is our present situation painful? Hebrews 12 continues, “Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives. . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

A little over two years ago I spent a memorable night in lockdown at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. In the cell to my right was Sam Brownback, the senator from Kansas who was there to kick off what became a short-lived run for the presidency. In the cell to my left was a serial rapist incarcerated for life. Just down the row was a Medellin drug cartel assassin. As in all real estate, the key was location, location, location.

But what really made the prison special was what Christ is doing in there. Under the leadership of Warden Burl Cain, the prison has been open to many ministries, and many prisoners have apparently been born again. It was joyful to get around the prison and hear them. Out of that spiritual change have arisen many programs, including the annual Returning Hearts Celebration. Last year 730 children of inmates came to the prison for a day of games, food, crafts, and pony rides that promote bonding and reconciliation between kids and dads, and within families. Over 1,000 children are scheduled for this year’s event on March 28, a joint effort between the penitentiary and Chicago-based Awana, an international youth and children’s ministry.

Such a program affects families and also makes waves outside them, because children of an incarcerated parent are seven times more likely than their peers to commit crimes and land in prison themselves. It’s vital to change that intergenerational pattern by showing kids what not to do but also by showing that even in prison people can change through Christ. Furthermore, the radical egalitarianism evident in Chapter 3 of Romans shows that all of us sin and are criminals in God’s eyes, apart from Christ, so children of prisoners should not feel that others are good and that they are marked as particularly bad by heredity. Awana now plans to expand the program to seven more prisons, including San Quentin in California.