Calvin and the Development of Freedom of Conscience.

The usual narrative is that Americans owe their ideas of Freedom of Conscience to their Protestant heritage.  I think that there is a great deal of truth to this, inasmuch as Freedom of Conscience seems to be an implicit value in democracy and grass-roots democracy was nurtured in many ways in the tradition of electing pastors and self-government in the congregational and presbyterian ecclesiastical systems.

But sometimes the case gets overstated.  The Protestant Reformation was not about a universalized right of the average person to Freedom of Conscience.  Rather, it was about the right of some people - Luther, Calvin, etc. - to their Freedom of Conscience, with everyone else going along for the ride.

This is a very interesting essay at Called to Communion by Dr. David Anders about how learning about John Calvin made the author Catholic.  Dr. Anders writes:

Calvin’s most important contribution to Geneva was the establishment of the Consistory – a sort of ecclesiastical court- to judge the moral and theological purity of his parishioners. He also persuaded the council to enforce a set of “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” that defined the authority of the Church, stated the religious obligations of the laity, and imposed an official liturgy. Church attendance was mandatory. Contradicting the ministers was outlawed as blasphemy. Calvin’s Institutes would eventually be declared official doctrine.


Calvin’s lifelong goal was to gain the right to excommunicate “unworthy” Church members. The city council finally granted this power in 1555 when French immigration and local scandal tipped the electorate in his favor. Calvin wielded it frequently. According to historian William Monter, one in fifteen citizens was summoned before the Consistory between 1559 and 1569, and up to one in twenty five was actually excommunicated.1 Calvin used this power to enforce his single vision of Christianity and to punish dissent.

And:

Calvin took very seriously the obligation of the laity to submit and obey. “Contradicting the ministers” was one of the most common reasons to be called before the Consistory and penalties could be severe. One image in particular sticks in my mind. April, 1546. Pierre Ameaux, a citizen of Geneva, was forced to crawl to the door of the Bishop’s residence, with his head uncovered and a torch in his hand. He begged the forgiveness of God, of the ministers and of the city council. His crime? He contradicted the preaching of Calvin. The council, at Calvin’s urging, had decreed Ameaux’s public humiliation as punishment.


Ameaux was not alone. Throughout the 1540s and 1550s, Geneva’s city council repeatedly outlawed speaking against the ministers or their theology. Furthermore, when Calvin gained the right to excommunicate, he did not hesitate to use it against this “blasphemy.” Evangelicals today, unaccustomed to the use of excommunication, may underestimate the severity of the penalty, but Calvin understood it in the most severe terms. He repeatedly taught that the excommunicated were “estranged from the Church, and thus, from Christ.”4

It wasn't burning at the stake, but, then, neither was the Roman Inquisition for the most part.