Ideas are not enough to last through time, unless they are anchored in adequate and adapted structures. Sometimes ‘spirit’ and ‘structures’ are set up in opposition to each other. But they need to be good friends, to advance hand in hand.
Geneva is often referred to in the media as ‘the city of Calvin’. And we have just opened a year of events to mark the 500th anniversary in 2009 of the great reformer’s birth, in the Picardy region of France. Without him, Geneva would not be the city it is. It is sometimes called ‘the Rome of the Reformation’. The Reformers’ Wall, at the foot of the old town, reveals an explosive world outreach of powerful ideas: to Scotland (John Knox trained here), to the United States with the Pilgrim Fathers, to Poland, Hungary, Germany and the Netherlands. I look forward to learning more about the founder of the protestant religious tradition to which I belong, since I am a lay preacher in the church that he did so much to establish here some 450 years ago.
He is often seen as austere, rigid – not the person you’d most like to sit next to at a dinner party! I’ve been dreaming of bringing out a Calvin joke book – but I left it a little late, and frankly, I’ve not heard that many great jokes attributed to him. But his great literary and religious work, ‘The Institutes of the Christian Religion’ was one of the first important works to be written in what is recognizable as modern French, rather than Latin – in order to reach out to a broader public than just the intellectuals of his day. He founded the college that became university here, was a pioneer of social work, and his religious thought was undoubtedly a ferment for democracy. The high school that he helped to found, and which exists still today, welcomed children, with the idea that education would open up the doors of knowledge, and allow them to study the Bible and forge their own convictions. Printing played an important part in the spread of these new ideas, as more ordinary people learned to read and write, and the Geneva Bible, one of the first widely used English translations, was first printed here in 1560.
The times were tougher than we easily comprehend, with famines, wars, plague and pest as the norm. But perhaps such precarity is indeed the norm of human existence. The faith that Calvin preached was a powerful antidote to the all-present mists of fear. ‘Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks,’ he wrote, ‘there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.’
There was a powerful wind of the spirit, ideas spread through this new technology of printing, and the rapid growth of an artisan class who had learned to read. But I reflect that ideas are not enough to last through time, unless they are anchored in adequate and adapted structures. Sometimes ‘spirit’ and ‘structures’ are set up in opposition to each other. But they need to be good friends, to advance hand in hand. A lot of Calvin’s time and energy went into organization and structures. Calvinism fostered a democratic system of parish councils, elected by the parishioners, and regional and national synods, also elected. And at least in our church, the lay people are always in the majority. Even if in strict terms we even insist that the ministers are lay people too, just that they’ve studied more theology in order to lead our study of Holy Scripture. For movements like Initiatives of Change, perhaps there is matter here for meditation.
And to end on another more up-lifting note from the great reformer: ‘There is not one blade of grass, there is no colour in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.’
Andrew Stallybrass, a British writer and publisher, lives in Caux, Switzerland, with his Swiss wife.
English