Nominal Calvinism

This week I was exposed to cultural/nominal Calvinism. It was a really weird thing. I was vaguely aware of such a thing from my childhood. Long before I knew there was ever a guy called Calvin, I had heard that the church I grew up in was traditionally Calvinist which meant they didn't approve of dancing. There are several errors in that sentence... the more you look the more you see.

This week in Leipzig, 20 years later, it came up again!

Now, I would call myself a Calvinist. My only hesitation is that Calvin didn't invent the theology to which I'm referring, but was himself a follower as well. So in fact would call myself a biblical Christian - but obviously that won't do.

Anyway, this week in Leipzig I went to dinner with my very excellent advisor Bernd. We were talking of Luther, the printing press, and the Bible. The unification of Germany in terms of language was largely due to Luther's translation. The dialects still exist, and apparently Bernd (who is from the south) cannot understand a Hamburger's dialect. So it was a big deal.

That subject got us on to religion in Germany in general. I learnt a lot from this. There are towns in Stuttgart where the Catholic and Protestant sides would, up until recently, have separate bakeries, and when, say, the Catholic one closed up for a holiday, the clientèle would frequent the local Muslim-run bakery rather than the protestant one, such was the animosity.

More interestingly though, I learnt that there is a town in Stuttgart which is vehemently "Calvinist", which until recently had only one park bench. It now has none. The reason it was removed was because someone who has time to sit about on a park bench is not being sufficiently industrious, read Calvinist. There is also a tradition in much of Stuttgart where the inhabitants of an apartment block must take turns cleaning the common area (the stair-well etc). I'd heard of this, but didn't realise it had anything to do with Calvinism. It turns out it is only a Calvinist thing, and only traditionally Calvinist parts of town adhere to this, and indeed take pride in it.

I've read about half of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (mainly books two and three I think), as well as a handful of Calvin's sermons. I have at least some idea what Calvin believed and taught. And despite his shortcomings (which I learnt all about in church history), I can safely say that the majority of Stuttgart do not believe what Calvin taught, and Calvin certainly did not teach the majority of what Stuttgarter's do.

 I suppose if you look hard enough you'll find nominal anything-ers.