Chinese Calvinism flourishes

John Calvin was a Frenchman, but he is being remembered in Geneva this week because it was here that he built Calvinism. Invited to reform the city in 1541, almost as what would now be called a management consultant, he formed an alliance with the city fathers. Over the next 20 years of preaching and pastoring they turned this tiny city, with a population then of only 10,000, into a model of church government and theology which has changed the world.

His followers now form the third-largest Christian grouping in the world. The world alliance of reformed churches claims 75 million members, and while this is a lower headline figure than the Anglican Communion's 80 million, it is not inflated by 25 million nominal Anglicans in Britain.

Although Calvinism is shrinking in western Europe and North America, it is experiencing an extraordinary success in China. I spent some time on Monday talking to the Rev May Tan, from Singapore, where the overseas Chinese community has close links with mainland China. The story she told of the spread of Calvinist religion as an elite religion in China was quite extraordinary. There may be some parallels with the growth of Calvinism in South Korea, where the biggest presbyterian churches in the world are to be found, but it's absolutely unlike the pattern in Africa and Latin America. There, the fastest growing forms of Christianity are pentecostal, and they are spreading among the poor.

More here-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/may/27/china-calvin-christianity

Chocolates for the elect show Calvin’s soft centre

From the "Truth is Stanger than Fiction" Department. In the Church Times. (Where do buy an orange top hat?)

CHOCOLATE BON-BONS have been created by a Swiss chocolatier to honour the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Reformer John Calvin The chocolates were ordered by the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches.

“It was an interesting challenge,” said Blaise Poyet of the Maison Poet company. “It’s not easy to represent theological ideas by using the taste buds,” he told Ecumenical News International. Getting the taste right took weeks of discussion and research. He has included ingredi ents local to Geneva which were available 500 years ago. They include lemon verbena, which was used to represent the reformer’s ability to plant new ideas and to see them flourish.

The first layer of the sweet was based on a smooth, runny praline mix. “But we have reformed it,” Mr Poyet said. He had used crunchy caramelised hazelnuts, and salt from the Alps, to make the praline slightly savoury. He also used a “chocolate grand cru from Bolivia”, made from 68-per-cent cocoa paste, to signify Calvin’s theology of perfection.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=65927