John Calvin--Making Work Respectable

For a thousand years, Europe lay in thrall to the notion that there were three kinds of people, and most of us didn’t count. The very top of society consisted of “those who pray”, the First Estate. These were the Pope, the bishops, the priests and the deacons.
Iron bars separated them and their high altars from the mere laity who stood for an hour on hard stone floors and watched a ritual through the bars that few understood. Laymen were not permitted even to take full communion—only the bread, not the chalice.
The Second Estate was a step down from the “Lords Spiritual.” These were the “Lords Temporal”, “those who fight”—the kings, the dukes, the counts and earls, the barons and the knights. Please note that these two upper classes did not work for a living.
“Those who work”, the Third Estate, did all the grunt work. They farmed, they were blacksmiths and carpenters, stone cutters—whatever was needed around a manor house or a cathedral. They were really beneath the notice of the first two estates, their “betters”.
As late as the 1750s, in Colonial America, the one ambition a man like Benjamin Franklin had was to make enough money so that he could cease working and call himself (and dress as befitted) a “gentleman”. Gentlemen DID NOT work.
In democratic England, in 1830, if a member of the lower classes even struck a nobleman, the penalty could be death. Today, British aristocrats still look askance at any of their members who have any kind of gainful employment. (This prohibition has long driven Prince Charles nuts.)
Even when money began to come into circulation in Medieval Europe, people whose only claim to position was earned money (the Sine Nobilis—those “without nobility”, where we get the word S.Nob from) were legally limited as to what they might wear. They must not be confused with either of the higher estates.
Five hundred years ago yesterday (July 10, 1509) a boy was born in a small town in France who would singlehandedly begin the theological and social changes that would make work—and those who do work—respectable, even honorable, even a sign of distinction.
He was raised to be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. His would have been a life of privilege, standing before an altar that lower classes might not even approach. As a teenager he switched from theology to law, but went on studying religious subjects like Greek.
When Luther’s Reformation spread to France, the young man found himself on the wrong side of the issue. He left France (and his French name—Jean Cauvin) behind and fled to Switzerland. Here he studied the Bible, wrote and preached for thirty years.
Few men have left behind a greater influence than John Calvin. His followers founded the state churches of Holland, Scotland—the dissenting Congregationalist Church of England—the Reformed Churches of Western Germany and had a powerful influence on Roman Catholic nations like Hungary, Ireland and France. (“The Three Musketeers” were fighting against French Calvinists.)
A great deal is written about his supposedly joyless theology, but the man enjoyed a good glass of wine (at one point his entire salary consisted of so many barrels of wine, which he was expected to use and sell for his support). Unlike some members of the Medieval Church, he saw sex between married partners as a good and joyful thing.
He differed sharply from Luther on one point—the authority of laymen in church and in the world. When Lutheran revolutionaries in Germany went beyond what Luther could tolerate in the behavior of the working classes, Luther called upon the Temporal Lords of Germany to strike them down. His quarrel was with the First Estate (Catholic clergy) only, not with feudalism per se.
Calvin created a church structure in which laymen had a vote and a real voice in church affairs. More than one historian has suggested that—through the Calvinistic influence of Puritan (Congregational) New England--this had a strong influence on the creation of American secular democracy.
Calvin viewed God as sovereign over all the earth. That included work and those who work. Yes, one could gain great merit in Heaven as a preacher, but in Calvin’s theology anyone could gain merit in Heaven who worked with all his might for the Glory of God—farming, shipping, manufacturing, selling, whatever one’s job was.
Thus was born “the Protestant work ethic” which made work respectable. In fact it tipped the other way—NOT working was considered frivolous and sinful. A thousand years of Christian history was dumped on its head.
Calvin’s theology opened the door to the use of capital (money) as a commodity—to be bought and sold like any other. The Medieval Church had long held that loaning money (to start a business or to buy a house) at interest was sinful.
Since business is impossible without the use (borrowing and lending) of capital at interest, Christians had been forced to turn to non-Christian sources like Jews. This made Jews pariahs and subject to a lot of extortion and robbery. Now that Christians could take on the onus—banking became respectable and moral.
Under Calvinism, money ceased to be “filthy lucre” and became a useful tool. It is to be noted that some of the wealthiest nations on earth up until very recently have been nations with strong Calvinistic influences like Great Britain, Holland, Germany, France and the United States.
(Some Catholic theologians are going to take peevish exception to my suggesting France has a strong Calvinistic strain. Admittedly most Huguenots were expelled and Jansenism (a Catholic form of Calvinism) was declared a heresy, but the influence of these two groups did not go away.)
To those of you who own stocks and bonds, who have a mortgage or a savings account—and to those of you who have respect because of what you do for work, those of you who can take pride in it—a tip of the hat to the man they called “That Frenchman!” John Calvin.