Beyond Calvin

A book very much like this one has been badly needed for many years. In providing it, Graeme Murdock has helped consolidate and advance a reconfiguration of this field in several important respects. The first, boldly announced in his title, is to displace Jean Calvin from his axiomatic place as the centre of what used unapologetically to be called ‘international Calvinism’, in favour of a broader conception of ‘Europe's Reformed Churches’ of which Calvinism strictly defined was only one species (albeit, in some quarters, the dominant one). This entails, secondly, jettisoning the familiar, straightforward historical narrative, beginning with Calvin's accidental visit to Geneva and culminating in the remarkable spread of his doctrine throughout broad swathes of Protestant Europe. Rather than attempting to substitute a far more complex polygenetic account, Murdock in fact dispenses with narrative almost completely. Thirdly, geography as well as chronology is also abandoned as the organising principle

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