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.
“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.”
