Calvin: the great re-former

John Calvin probably never heard of the Western Isles, and many in the Western Isles certainly wish they had never heard of him.

There’s no point in re-traversing the old familiar allegations of his baneful influence on the arts; nor is there any point in defending him from the charge that it was his fault that in the 1970s a man from Barvas had to trudge the seven miles to Galson if he wanted a ‘Christian drink’. What really bugs me is that scarcely a day passes but the phrase ‘a narrow Calvinism’ walks across my computer-screen.

I have two problems with this. One is that Calvin never saw himself as the founder of an -ism. In his own lifetime, there is only one single instance of the word “Calvinism” being used, and that was as an insult, as if we today were to call someone a Nazi. In this respect things aren’t much better in 2013. Read more