Portal:Reformed Christianity

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The Reformed Christianity Portal

Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed, Presbyterian, and Congregational traditions, as well as parts of the Anglican (known as "Episcopal" in some regions) and Baptist traditions.

Reformed theology emphasizes the authority of the Bible and the sovereignty of God, as well as covenant theology, a framework for understanding the Bible based on God's covenants with people. Reformed churches have emphasized simplicity in worship. Several forms of ecclesiastical polity are exercised by Reformed churches, including presbyterian, congregational, and some episcopal. Articulated by John Calvin, the Reformed faith holds to a spiritual (pneumatic) presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper.

Emerging in the 16th century, the Reformed tradition developed over several generations, especially in Switzerland, Scotland and the Netherlands. In the 17th century, Jacobus Arminius and the Remonstrants were expelled from the Dutch Reformed Church over disputes regarding predestination and salvation, and from that time Arminians are usually considered to be a distinct tradition from the Reformed. This dispute produced the Canons of Dort, the basis for the "doctrines of grace" also known as the "five points" of Calvinism. (Full article...)

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Anne Hutchinson, born Anne Marbury (1591–1643), was a Puritan spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area, and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.

Hutchinson is a key figure in the development of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry. She challenged the authority of the ministers, exposing the subordination of women in the culture of colonial Massachusetts. She is honoured by Massachusetts with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." She has been called the most famous, or infamous, English woman in colonial American history.

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Image 1Statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, influential theologians in developing the Reformed faith, at the Reformation Wall in Geneva (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 2John Calvin depicted on his deathbed with church members in The last moments of Calvin, a late 19th century portrait by Lluís Domènech i Montaner (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 3Calvin preached at St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 4Fall of Man by Jacob Jordaens (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 5Moses Amyraut formulated Amyraldism, a modified Calvinist theology regarding the nature of Jesus' atonement. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 6The Directory for Public Worship described what should (and should not) occur in worship. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 7The burning of the Guernsey Martyrs during the Marian persecutions in 1556 (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 8A Reformed church in Koudekerk aan den Rijn in the Netherlands in the 19th century (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 9The Shield of the Trinity diagrams the classic doctrine of the Trinity. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 10The Parable of the Prodigal Son, depicted in a portrait by Rembrandt, illustrates forgiveness. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 11Early Calvinism was known for simple, unadorned churches as depicted in this 1661 portrait of the interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 12The Grote Kerk in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, c. 1665 (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 13Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper initiated Neo-Calvinism. (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 14The seal of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, an early American Presbyterian church founded in 1789 (from Reformed Christianity)
Image 15Stephen Bocskai, leader of Hungarian Calvinists in the anti-Habsburg rebellion and first Calvinist prince of Transylvania (r. 1605–1606) (from Reformed Christianity)

Did you know...

...that the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, is the oldest continuously serving Presbyterian church in the United States?

...that as he lay dying, the American Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen declared that there is no hope without the active obedience of Christ?

... that Robert Dick Wilson was a leading Bible scholar who was able to read the New Testament in nine different languages while still at Princeton University, and strongly defended the Bible's historical accuracy?

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