This year is the five-hundredth anniversary of
John Calvin's birth, but while the occasion is
being marked by his followers, in the wider world
the Protestant reformer is remembered with little
affection. 'Calvinism' is regarded as a harsh and
humourless creed, whose founder lacks even the
glamour of his German counterpart Martin Luther.
While the French thinker influenced Protestant
churches internationally, in Britain he is mostly
associated with the strict Presbyterianism once
prevalent in dreich old Scotland.
It is true that the Calvin-infused,
Hellfire-preaching Kirk was a stifling influence
on Scottish culture for centuries, and there are
still parts of the Western Isles where the
McTaliban holds sway; though the pious
inhabitants of the island of Lewis have recently
been shaken, first by Sunday ferry sailings, and
then by the inevitable consequence: same-sex
civil partnership! But the name Calvin is rarely
heard in modern Scotland outside the phrase 'the
dead hand of Calvin', his legacy seen as a grim one best left in the past.
Intriguingly, though, the most enduring critique
of Calvinism to be found in Scottish culture
targets not its social conservatism, but rather
the self-righteous individualism that can arise
from its peculiar doctrine of the 'elect', the
idea that the destiny of our souls is
predetermined by God. James Hoggâs Private
Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
(1824) concerns a young man who is led astray by
a devilish doppelganger who convinces him that,
since he is surely one of the elect and thus
guaranteed a place in Heaven, he can sin on Earth
with impunity. Taken alongside Robert Burnsâ
satirical poem 'Holy Willie's Prayer' (1785),
this shows Scotland was the first country to make
a morality tale of excessive religiosity, and by
implication a pious duty of self-doubt. No wonder we drink.
<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7264>Link
--
Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/08/theres-more-to-calvin-than-dourness-and.htm>monochrom
at 8/19/2009 06:32:00 PM
