BBC Radio Devon – Pause for Thought: Storm Centres
During the Pause for Thought recently, I’ve been talking about 7 places I have been to: Storm-centres of history.
Today, we will go to Geneva.
Geneva is a beautiful city. I don’t know if that was the case half a millennia ago, but back in the mid-16th century, it was a religious storm-centre that changed Europe and the world forever.
John Calvin (1509-64) was a shy, French intellectual; a 2nd generation Protestant Reformer. He was a lamb who would become a lion.
This was about reforming what was deformed in Church and cultural life.
Calvin (the lamb) himself wanted to retire to a life of private study and theological writing. He set out for Strasbourg but a French War diverted him to Geneva.
Continue reading “Storm Centres of History: Geneva & Reformation”
“In Zurich they didn’t do revolts and rampages. They ate sausages. It was Lent of 1522, when twelve friends got together to hold a sausage-eating party. Tradition had it that one was not supposed to eat meat during Lent. These men wanted to defy human tradition. Zwingli sat that one out: making gestures with sausages was not his way of reformation. But he did publically defend his friends, for Lent, he argued, was just a human institution. Christians are to worship only according to God’s command; to add human commands (about such things as what Christians can eat and when) was to add an unnecessary burden to people that Christ never asked his follwers to bear.”
Gralefrit Theology 