Ulrich Zwingli

In Zurich, Switzerland, meanwhile, a young priest was being drawn toward Luther's reform movement. In 1522 Ulrich Zwingli began to make his moves to establish Scripture as the sole religious authority for the Christian. He opposed the Lenten Fast, citing the lack of Scriptural warrant for the practice--a position which was supported by the Zurich civil government. The bishop of Constance tried to suppress this innovation--but lost out to the Zurich government, which moved to take control of ecclesiastical matters within its jurisdiction.  Zwingli supported this shift in authority--claiming that the civil government, under the Lordship of Christ and guided in its work by the dictates of Scripture, was the legitimate voice or conscience of the believing community.

Meanwhile the Reformation began to spread to other parts of Switzerland: most notably to the cities of Basel (where Oecolampadius had been leading the reform movement), Constance and Bern. It also made its way down the Rhine River to Strasburg--where under the leadership of Zell, Capito and Bucer the reform movement there took on the more thoroughgoing Swiss character (as distinct from the more conservative Lutheran variety).

But the conservative rural cantons of Switzerland remained firmly opposed to the Zwinglian reforms. Relations grew bitter and hostilities resulted--with Zwingli himself being wounded and then put to death in a losing battle against the rural cantons in 1531.

The more gentle-natured Heinrich Bullinger took over the Zurich reform movement.

But to Zwingli and the Swiss reformers (identified as the Reformed party) there were strong interests in restructuring the organization and practices of the church around its original constitutional base: Scripture.  There was a stripping away of every feature of Christianity that could not be supported by Scriptural warrant.  This was in keeping with Zwingli's humanist background--and its focus on the Greek and Hebrew origins of the church, and the sense that everything that was a departure from this classical age was a perversion of an original purity undergirding the church.

This would not probably have kept Luther and Zwingli from working closely together--except that one portion of Zwingli's reforms were violently opposed by Luther:  Zwingli's treatment of the celebration of the Lord's supper.  Zwingli (for whom the sermon, not the celebration of the eucharist, was the central point of Christian worship) interpreted Christ's words concerning his presence in the wine and bread as purely symbolic.  To Luther, this was a shocking diminution of the power of the real presence of Christ in the elements of the eucharist.  The gap was, in both their minds, unbridgeable by the mid 1520s. Others of both parties tried to effect a compromise.  But Luther, even after Zwingli's death, would not hear of compromise. Lutheranism and the Reformed faith split permanently.

In the meantime in France, John Calvin (1509 to 1564), as a young jurist, was trying to convince the French king, Francis 1st, to give sympathy to the reform movement.  In 1536 he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

This not only failed to convince the king, but also identified Calvin as a voice of religious dissent, not tolerated in France.  Calvin was forced to flee France.  In coming to Geneva, Switzerland, the protestant reformer Farel prevailed upon Calvin to stay in the city and help him with the reformed movement which was growing rapidly there. But for Calvin, this proved to be a stormy proposition.  Geneva was an unruly city, and Calvin's natural bent toward orderliness and discipline made him many enemies in the city.  In the spring of 1538 Calvin and Farel were banished from Geneva.  He fled to Strasbourg, where the Reform movement was well established.

But in 1541, the old group partisan to Calvin urgently requested his return to Geneva.  Calvin somewhat reluctantly decided to make his return--but on his terms.  Upon his return, Calvin organized (accepting many compromises with the city Council) the religious life of the city around his new Ordinances--the foundation of Reformed polity.  Geneva in turn became identified under Calvin's leadership as the model Christian city, the "New Jerusalem" of Protestantism.

Calvin was an urban European, steeped in the bourgeois mindset of the rising European urban "middle class."  Calvin's interest in reform of the crumbling medieval moral-legal order involved importantly a vision of the new urban order as central to a purified Christianity.  And his interest in reform did not limit itself merely to matters of religious doctrine--as was the case for Luther.  Calvin truly was interested in a comprehensive reordering of every aspect of post-medieval life:  political, economic, and social as well as theological.

Importantly, he gave a theological rationale for the independent-mindedness of the urban commercial class--arming them with Scriptural justification for going their own way within God's creation.  Indeed, he encouraged them to establish purified political-economic-social orders as a way of purging Christendom of its corruption and of bringing glory to God in Jesus Christ.  He made their soul-searching independent-mindedness a matter of the greatest importance in their standing before God.  They not only had the right to be accountable to God alone as sovereign over them--they had the Christian duty to see that this was the case.  The supposition was that any earthly lord who positioned himself between them and God was going to be problematic in their "purified" relationship with God and their covenantal life in the purified Christian commonwealth.

The followers of Calvin attempted to convince the rich and powerful kings of Europe that their movement had no treasonous instincts--and that they planned to be good citizens in the realms where they lived.  The kings were not convinced.  And rightly so.  Everything about Calvinism pointed to the idea of these people being accountable to no earthly ruler but to God alone.  Switzerland, which was the birthplace of Calvin's Reformed Movement was well recognized for its independent mindedness and refusal to acknowledge the rule of any princely lord over the land.  No, Calvin's Reformed Movement, or "Calvinism" was destined to bring a clash with traditional princely and priestly rulers who claimed to rule by "divine rights."  That was exactly what the Calvinists claimed for their own "self-rule":  self-rule by divine right--even by divine imperative.   There was no way these two mind-sets were going to work cooperatively.

For more information on Calvin

We must at this point mention one of these "Calvinists":  John Knox, the great Protestant reformer of Scotland.  Knox not only helped direct Scotland to Calvinist Protestantism in the mid 1500s, but also left a powerful political legacy within the Calvinist or Reformed branch of  Protestantism, a political legacy we call "Presbyterianism."  Knox's Presbyterianism not only deternimed the organization of the Church of Scotland but also layed the foundations for the growth of  representative democracy in the American middle colonies (from New Jersey to South Carolina) in the 1600s and 1700s.

As with many Protestant reformers, Knox began as a Catholic priest, highly discontent with the moral and spiritual corruption that had overtaken the Mother Church.  He was attracted to the Lutheran teachings of the early Scottish reformer, George Wishart; was appalled when in 1546 the Catholic cardinal had Wishart burned at the stake as a heretic; and then joined the group of rebels who moved to overthrow the hand of the Catholic church over Scotland.  This put him in opposition to the pro-French party that ruled Scotland--and when French troops in 1547 crushed this Protestant rebellion in Scotland, Knox was led off  to captivity as a French galley slave.  His release was finally secured by the pro-Protestant English King Edward VI, leading Knox to come to England to be a Protestant pastor and then chaplain to the King.

But when Edward died in 1553 and Catholic Mary Tudor ("Bloody Mary") came to the throne, Knox left England and made his way eventually to Geneva Switzerland where he joined a community of English expatriates living and studying under the direction of the great Genevan reformer, John Calvin.  Knox took a great liking to both Calvin and his teachings and subsequently became a major voice in the English/Scottish reform movement not only in Geneva, but through letters, to a growing Protestant movement back in Scotland.

He returned briefly to Scotland in 1555, became pastor of the English church in Geneva, and then finally in 1559 he returned definitively to Scotland to take over the spiritual leadership of the Protestant rebellion against the French-Catholic regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise.  Seeing that things were not going well in Scotland for the Protestant party, Queen Elizabeth of England came to their aid against the French in Scotland.  But when Mary of Guise died suddenly in 1560, the French Catholic cause in Scotland was dead.  Scotland was now won for Protestantism.

At this point Knox and his supporters began to reshape the Scottish church--not only theologically along the lines of Calvin's Reformed Faith born in Geneva, but also politically in a way that was Knox's special contribution to the Protestant cause.  Knox took the idea of representative government characteristic of Calvin's reformed churches (communities lead by elected elders or "presbyters"), and applied it locally, regionally and nationally in total reversal of the top-down or hierarchical fashion of Catholic or "episcopalian" government.  Thus local councils ("Presbyteries"), regional councils ("Synods") and national councils ("General Assemblies") that presided over the faithful were made up of representatives not of the political rulers over the church but of the people themselves.  Thus was born "Presbyterian" or representative church government--the source of inspiration for the new Democratic or Republican forms of government that led eventually to the Constitution of 1789 underpinning the new American Republic.

Despite success in the Protestant takeover of the church Scotland, the continuing existence of a Catholic monarchy in Scotland under Mary of Guise's daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, made life still highly problematic for Protestant Scotland--and for John Knox personally as the two locked wills in on-going battle.  But eventually Mary's poor diplomacy proved to be her undoing and in 1567 she was forced to flee to England, where Elizabeth put her under house arrest, where she remained for the rest of her life.

In any case Knox, worn out and sickly, died from his labors in 1572.  But his work in  Scotland was carried forth faithfully by others, notably Andrew Melville.

For more information on Knox