Abstract
He left the city, like hundreds of others, quietly and quickly. Protests and placards had led to riots and arrests. Rumors of torture for those responsible swirled throughout the capital; soon there would be executions. It was no longer safe to live in his country of birth. In the eyes of the authorities, his beliefs meant that he was a traitor. A friend reports that during his flight, he was plundered by a servant and was forced to complete his journey without transport or finance. Even when he was safely beyond the border, he was still without a home. For seven years, he would wctnder from city to city— settling down for a period, only to leave again when his welcome wore thin or a new opportunity arose. Finally, he would settle in a city that bordered his homeland. In the decade after he arrived, the city quickly became a haven for countless other refugees—initially from his native country but soon joined by others from throughout the continent who began to stream to this city of scznctuary. Records show that “more than five thousand heads of household inscribed their names in this register, and several thousand more went unrecorded. These immigrrxnts remained a distinctive and influential segment of the urban population.”1 The locals, though, soon began to grumble about the city being overrun by foreigners, and new arrivals reported being “treated with contempt and suspicion by those among whom they tried to settle.” 2
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Notes
Philip Benedict, Christ’s Church Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 99.
Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 199.
J. E. Olson, Calvin and Social Welfare: Deacons and the Bourse Frcznçaise (London: Associated University Presses, 1989), 11.
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 134.
This chapter builds on and constructively expands on the insights and arguments of Robert R. Vosloo’s “The Displaced Calvin: ‘Refugee Reality’ as a Lens to Re-examine Calvin’s Life, Theology and Legacy,” Religion and Theology 16 (2009): 35–52.
Michael Wilson Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528–1559 (New York: Springer, 2005), 167.
Philip Marfleet, Refugees in a Global Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 102–5.
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Keley (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962 [1625]), Book II.2.16.
Philip Benedict, Christ’s Church Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 84.
R. Stephen Weber, A Church of Our Own: Disestablishment and Diversity in American Religion (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), chap. 15.
David Fergusson, Church, State and Civil Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 140.
There is a long and vibrant tradition of African American Presbyterianism. For more, see Gayraud S. Wilmore, “Identity and Integration: Black Presbyterians and Their Allies in the Twentieth Century,” in The Presbyterian Predicament: Six Perspectives, ed. Milton J. Coalter, John M. Mulder, and Louis B Weeks (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 109–33.
Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 145.
William Bouswma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 17.
Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 109.
Heiko Oberman, The Two Reformations: The Journey from the Last Days to the New World, ed. Donald Weinstein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 144.
Heiko Oberman, John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2009), 162.
R. Stephen Warner, “The De-Europeanization of American Christianity,” in A Nation of Religions: Pluralism in the American Public Square, ed. Stephen Prothero (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 233–55.
John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, ed. John C. Olin (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1966), 62.
John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1960), IV.1.9.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, The Power of the Poor in History, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), 193.
Matthew J. Gibney, “Caring at a Distance: (Im)partiality, Moral Motivation and the Ethics of Representation—Asylum and the Principle of Proximity,” Ethics, Place & Environment: A Journal of Philosophy ér Geography 3 (2000): 313–17.
Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, From Crisis to Kairos: The Mission of the Church in the Time of HIV/AIDS, Refugees, and Poverty (Nairobi: Pauline Publications of Africa, 2005).
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, trans. Thomas T. Torrance (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1956), 703.
Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come (New York: Seabury, 1974), 35.
See Dirkie J. Smit, Essays on Being Reformed: Collected Essays 3 (Stellen bosch, South Africa: SUN MeDia, 2009), 390.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Bonhoeffer Works vol. 4 (Minneapo lis, MN: Fortress, 2003), 234–35.
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© 2016 Joshua Ralston
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Ralston, J. (2016). “Gathered from all Nations”. In: Snyder, S., Ralston, J., Brazal, A.M. (eds) Church in an Age of Global Migration. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137518125_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137518125_3
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