John Calvin and the perils of Theocracy

John Calvin turned 500 years old this year.

As a Pentecostal, I obtained special access to heaven to attend a gala birthday bash in his honor.

Organizer Martin Bucer wanted to surprise John at home, but the guest list was too large for John’s 10,000 square foot mansion to accommodate. Instead, Michael Servetus invited John over to his place (15,000 square feet) - ostensibly for a barbeque – a ruse that worked beautifully. A great time was had by all, and John acknowledged the irony of being invited to a “barbeque” at Michael’s house, even while raising a toast to his good friend.

Upon returning to Earth, I pondered Calvin’s impact in the world.

My first thought was the horrendous burning of Servetus.

This brilliant but stubborn man, having escaped from Catholics (who would have executed him), ventured into Geneva - a thriving theocracy whose leading citizen - Calvin - had warned him not to come, on pain of death.

True to his word, Calvin (who had been annoyed by several unsolicited letters from Servetus) was the leading witness for the prosecution, and Servetus was burnt as a heretic.

This appalling episode is merely the most famous of several in which Christians were executed by other Christians in the name of orthodoxy.

Church history is replete with examples of the perils of a theocracy. Both Catholics and Protestants used state power to tyrannize dissenters and non-conformists.

Servetus's crime was dissent from the doctrine of the Trinity. This gives me extra pause, since I am also non-Trinitarian.

The outrage against Servetus notwithstanding, John Calvin is largely responsible for the separation of civil government from church government in our country. Separation of church and state wasn’t conceived by Progressives concerned about government enforced social mores, but by Calvinists (who had been on the receving end of more persecution than they had doled out) desiring to protect the Church from a meddling state.

Christians in colonial America wanted no part of a theocracy dominated by any religious sect, or a theocracy where the state is god.

Accordingly, it was through the efforts of anti-Federalists – mostly Calvinist in their theology - that the Bill of Rights was included in our Constitution.

The god of statism is currently the greatest threat to our liberty. Progressive socialism advances with slogans fitting a religious revival: "change you can believe in."

"Yes we [i.e. government] can."

Progressives (the old, but new, trendy label preferred by militant collectivists) spread fear of a fundamentalist takeover of the government even as said government ensures the transfer of all the nation's wealth to itself through debt monetization.

Similarly, the Progressives of the 1930's used Nazism and Fascism as bugaboos, while their idol, Stalin, secretly worked with Hitler to plunge the world into unprecedented chaos.

To be sure, religious tyrants have oppressed far too many humans throughout history.

But unrestrained states, of the kind that Obama and his progressive cohorts seek, have murdered or enslaved hundreds of millions - in the last century alone.

We are in peril of becoming serfs in a theocracy where there is one god, the State, whose prophet is Obama.