Calvinism: Source of Democracy?

America's Founding Fathers took up arms in defense of "the rights of Englishmen." Yet they were all staunch opponents of "democracy." Many historians and political scientists have inquired into the relationship between Calvinism (sometimes called "Puritanism") and individual liberties (erroneously referred to as "democracy"). The results have varied:

Extremes:

The fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty; and, in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was his most faithful counsellor and his never-failing support.
The Puritans, rallying upon those [industrious] classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.

—GEORGE BANCROFT

In its initial form Calvinism not only included a condemnation of resistance but it lacked all leaning toward liberalism, constitutionalism, or representative principles. Where it had free range it developed characteristically into a theocracy, a kind of oligarchy maintained by an alliance of the clergy and gentry from which the mass of the people was excluded and which was, in general, illiberal, oppressive, and reactionary.

—GEORGE H. SABINE

Did Calvin himself favor democracy as a form of government?

Calvin was as much in favor of the democratic form as he was opposed to the monarchical one.
Calvin was a great propagator of democracy, but he energetically tried to ward off its abuses and excesses.

—EMILE DOUMERGUE

From considering only his political ideas, one would certainly be entitled to conclude that Calvin was not a precursor of modern democracy.

—CHARLES MERCIER

If Calvin mixes democratic elements with aristocratic constitutions, he nevertheless remains completely foreign to the dogmas of modern democracy . . . he does not believe either in popular sovereignty or in individual rights.

—MARC-EDOUARD CHENEVIÈRE

As an ideal form, Calvin wavers between pure aristocracy and a mixed form of aristocracy and democracy. Despite this obvious fact, there persist among Calvin scholars assertions which depict Calvin as favoring either a pure democracy or a pure aristocracy and correspondingly speak of a democratic or aristocratic principle in him.

—JOSEF BOHATEC

"Democracy" is not a term in favor with Calvin. He does not advocate democracy in and of itself: he fears its deterioration into anarchy. Nevertheless, his notion of "aristocracy tempered by democracy" approaches our conception of representative democracy. It becomes unmistakably clear in his later writings that the ideal basis of government is election by the citizens.

—JOHN T. MCNEILL

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the elders really represent the Church, which delegates to them its sovereignty. The theory of the representative system is really a Calvinist theory.

—EMILE DOUMERGUE

One believes oneself dreaming, when one learns from M. Doumergue, that "authentic Calvinist conceptions" are "at the origin of the representative system." Even if one gives to the role of the community in the Calvinist Church its largest sense, and even if one neglects the important restrictions on it stipulated by Calvin, one still searches in vain for any new principles this conception would bring to republican Geneva.

—GEORGES DE LAGARDE

Was Calvinist thought the principal inspiration for the earliest 'democratic' revolts against authoritarian governments in Europe?

Calvinist political thought helped more than any other tendency of the time to prevent a full victory of absolutism, and to prepare the way for constitutional and even republican ideas.

—HANS BARON

Religion was the binding force that held together the divergent interests of the different classes and provided them with an organization and a propaganda machine capable of creating the first genuinely national and international parties in modern European history, . . . and popular democratic tyranny appeared both in Calvinist Ghent and Catholic Paris.

—H. G. KOENIGSBERGER

It will be argued below that it was the Calvinists who first switched the emphasis of political thought from the prince to the saint (or band of saints) and then constructed a theoretical justification for independent political action.

—MICHAEL WALZER

A modern moral:

If in our time the realm of politics is to be redeemed from corruption and triviality and snarling partisanship, the church has a function to perform that it has too much neglected. It will not be a waste of time to sit for a while at Calvin's feet.

—JOHN T. MCNEILL