John Calvin
John Calvin, from France, led a powerful Protestant group by preaching an ideology of predestination. Calvinist doctrine stated that God had predetermined an ultimate destiny for all people, most of whom God had already damned. Only a few, he preached, would be saved, and those people were known as the Elect. In the 1530s, the city of Geneva in Switzerland invited Calvin to construct a Protestant theocracy in the city, which was centrally located and near France. From there, Calvinists teachings spread, and were as influential to successive Protestant Reformations as were the doctrines of Luther.
|