and with a reforming agenda which generally extended beyond that of the reformer to include consolidation of their economic and social influence. The relation between reformer and city council was thus delicate, easily prone to disruption, with real power permanently in the hands of the latter.
In the case of Geneva, a delicate relationship developed between the city’s reformers (initially Guillaume Farel assisted by Calvin, and subsequently Calvin alone) and the city council. Conscious and jealous of its hard-won authority and liberty, the city council was determined not to substitute the tyranny of a reformer for that of a Catholic bishop. In 1536, the city had just gained its independence from Savoy, and had largely retained that independence – despite the attempts of Berne to colonize the city. Geneva was in no mood to be dictated to by anyone, unless they were in a position to bring massive economic and military pressure to bear. As a result, severe restrictions were placed upon Calvin’s activities. He was someone whose options were severely limited.
The expulsion of Calvin from Geneva in 1538 demonstrates that political power remained firmly in the hands of the city council. The notion that Calvin was the “dictator of Geneva” is totally devoid of historical foundation. Nevertheless, the city council found itself unable to cope with a deteriorating religious situation in Calvin’s absence. In a remarkable act of social pragmatism and religious realism, the council recalled their reformer and allowed him to continue his work of reform. Geneva needed Calvin, just as Calvin needed Geneva.
An important difference may be noted at this point between Lutheran and Reformed thought. Luther was the product of a small Saxon town under the thumb of the local prince, but the great Reformed thinkers Zwingli and Bucer were the product of the great free cities of Zurich and Strasbourg. For these latter, the Reformation involved the identification of “citizen” with “Christian.” Zwingli thus laid great emphasis upon the need to reform and redeem a community, whereas Luther tended to concentrate upon the need to reform and redeem the individual. Luther, through his doctrine of the “Two Kingdoms,” effectively separated religious ideas from secular life, whereas Zwingli insisted upon their mutual integration. It is therefore significant that the Reformed church gained its most secure power-bases in the cities of southern Germany and Switzerland, which were more advanced socially, culturally, and economically than the northern cities destined to become Lutheran strongholds.
The social context of the Reformation is a fascinating subject in itself, but is noted here primarily on account of its obvious influence upon at least some of the religious ideas of the reformers. For example, there are excellent reasons for suggesting that many of Zwingli’s ideas (especially his ideas concerning the societal function of the sacraments) were directly conditioned by the political, economic, and social circumstances of Zurich. Equally, some of Calvin’s ideas about the proper structures of a Christian church seem to reflect institutions already in existence at Geneva prior to his arrival in that city.
The urban context of many Reformation theologians and communities is also linked with the emergence of “world-affirming” spiritualities which celebrated and encouraged a positive relationship between Christianity and the secular world – a topic we shall consider in the following section.
Sacralizing the Secular: Christianity as a World-Engaging Faith
Recent studies have noted how most of the intellectual and spiritual leaders of medieval Christianity were monastic, isolated from many of the harsher realities of everyday life by the walls of their monasteries and convents. Although there is ample evidence that what could be considered to be “evangelical” modes of thought arose within some of the monasteries of northern Italy in response to a growing interest in the spirituality of Paul’s letters in the final decade of the fifteenth century, it is important to note that Protestantism’s early cultural habitat was the world of European cities and marketplaces, exposing its thinkers to pressures and problems that their Catholic forebears had not been required to consider. The intellectual leaders of the first phase of Protestantism – such as Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin – developed both their reforming programs and their understanding of how Christians related to the world within an urban context.
Yet the transition from the monastery to marketplace exposed these reforming movements to precisely the dangers, threats, and problems that had led to the emergence of the monastic movement in the first place. Monasticism recognized the dangers of contamination of faith by political power, financial privilege, and being part of the cultural establishment. Monasticism withdrew from the world, in order to maintain its spiritual and religious purity. So how could the urbanized forms of Christianity that emerged from the Reformation maintain their spiritual integrity, when they existed in such a close relationship with the power structures of the imperial cities?
The negotiation of the boundaries between the spiritual and secular became an increasingly important theme in the forms of spirituality that emerged from the reforming movements in Germany and Switzerland. This contrasted sharply with the dominant themes of medieval spirituality. In some ways, the movement generally known as the Devotio Moderna (“Modern Devotion”) can be seen as anticipating themes later linked with the Reformation, such as the affirmation of the spiritual importance of the laity. Perhaps the most famous work to emerge from this school is Thomas à Kempis’ De imitatione Christi, written around 1425. The full title of this work, in English, is On the Imitation of Christ and Contempt for the World. A positive response to Jesus Christ is here presented as entailing a negative response to the world. For à Kempis, cultivating a detached or negative attitude toward the world was a mark of spiritual maturity and a precondition for spiritual growth. To “take up the cross” was to renounce the world.
The forms of spirituality which emerged from reforming movements in Germany and Switzerland had little sympathy for such an ethos of disconnection and detachment. Despite divergences on points of detail, Luther and Calvin insisted that Christianity belonged in the everyday world; there was no sound theological basis for a distinction between the “spiritual” and “temporal” realms (see p. 183). All Christians are called to be priests, and that calling extends to the everyday world. They are called to purify and sanctify its everyday life from within. Luther stated this point succinctly: “What seem to be secular works are actually the praise of God and represent an obedience which is well pleasing to him.”
This is often presented as a secularization of the sacred; while there is some truth in this, it is important to realize that early reforming writers saw this more in terms of the sacralization of the everyday world, in that activities traditionally regarded as lacking any spiritual role or significance came to be invested with religious value. The Protestant work ethic, now too often misunderstood simply as the affirmation of the value of productive labor, was more fundamentally about the discernment of the spiritual value of working in the home and the world, which was often framed as a form of worship and witness.
This point is brought out clearly by the English Protestant poet George Herbert in the early seventeenth century. Herbert is noted for his ability to transpose the leading themes of the Protestant reformation into poetic diction. For Herbert, the performance of even a menial action in the service of God endows it with significance and value.4
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
The key point here is that the Reformation articulated a way of thinking – and consequently a way of living – which affirmed the importance of everyday life, turning what might be seen as the mundane into acts of service and witness.
Up to this point, we have focused on some positive aspects of the new ways of thinking – which Luther and Calvin carefully depicted as a recovery of
