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 sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Western Church. 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 seventeenth 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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James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scots as James VI, and King of England and King of Ireland as James I. He ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567, when he was only one year old, succeeding his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been forced to abdicate. Regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578. On 24 March 1603, as James I, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He then ruled England, Scotland and Ireland for 22 years, until his death at the age of 58. Towards the Puritan clergy, with whom he debated at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans; but ejections and suspensions from livings became fewer as the reign wore on. A notable success of the Hampton Court Conference was the commissioning of a new translation of the Bible, completed in 1611, which became known as the King James Bible, considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose. In Scotland, James attempted to bring the Scottish kirk "so neir as can be" to the English church and reestablish the episcopacy, a policy which met with strong opposition. In 1618, James's bishops forced his Five Articles of Perth through a General Assembly; but the rulings were widely resisted. James was to leave the church in Scotland divided at his death, a source of future problems for his son.

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

Did you know...

...that John Calvin's works include some 1,300 letters, making him "the great letter-writer of the Reformation age" according to B. B. Warfield?

...that in Reformed theology, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is believed to strengthen Christians' union with Christ by the spiritual eating of his true body and blood?