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Across much of the postcolonial world, Christianity has often become inseparable from ideas and practices linking the concept of modernity to that of human emancipation. To explore these links, Webb Keane undertakes a rich ethnographic study of the century-long encounter, from the colonial Dutch East Indies to post-independence Indonesia, among Calvinist missionaries, their converts, and those who resist conversion. Keane's analysis of their struggles over such things as prayers, offerings, and the value of money challenges familiar notions about agency. Through its exploration of language, materiality, and morality, this book illuminates a wide range of debates in social and cultural theory. It demonstrates the crucial place of Christianity in semiotic ideologies of modernity and sheds new light on the importance of religion in colonial and postcolonial histories.

This is a historical anthropological study of a period of social and religious tensions in a Calvinist city in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first half of the 18th century. The last and greatest plague epidemic to devastate Hungary and Transylvania between cca. 1738 and 1743 led to a clash of different opinions and beliefs on the origin of the plague and ways of fighting it. Situated on the Great Hungarian Plain, the city of Debrecen saw not only frequent violations of the imposed lockdown measures among its inhabitants but also a major uprising in 1739. The author examines the historical sources (handwritten city records, written and printed regulations, criminal proceedings, and other documents) to be found in the Debrecen city archives, as well as the writings of the local Calvinist pastors published in the same town. The purpose of the study is to outline the main directions of interpretation concerning the plague and manifest in the urban uprising. According to the findings of the author, there was a stricter and chronologically earlier direction, more in keeping with local Puritanism in the second half of the 17th century, and there was also a more moderate and later one, more in line with the assumptions and expectations of late 18th-century medical science. While the former set of interpretations seems to have been founded especially on a so-called “internal” cure (i.e., religious piety and repentance), the latter proposed mostly “external” means (i.e., quarantine measures and herbal medicine) to avoid the plague and be rid of it. There seems to have existed, however, a third set of interpretations: that of folk beliefs and practices, i.e., sorcery and magic. According to the files, a number of so-called “wise women” also attempted to cure the plague-stricken by magical means. The third set of interpretations and their implied practices were not tolerated by either of the other two. The author provides a detailed micro-historical analysis of local events and the social and religious discourses into which they were embedded.

A comprehensive study of the connection between Calvinist missions and Dutch imperial expansion during the early modern period \"A tour de force offering the reader the best study of global Calvinism in the realms of the Dutch East India Company.\"-Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, editor, Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age Calvinism went global in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as close to a thousand Dutch Reformed ministers, along with hundreds of lay chaplains, attached themselves to the Dutch East India and West India companies. Across Asia, Africa, and the Americas where the trading companies set up operation, Dutch ministers sought to convert \"pagans,\" \"Moors,\" Jews, and Catholics and to spread the cultural influence of Protestant Christianity. As Dutch ministers labored under the auspices of the trading companies, the missionary project coalesced, sometimes grudgingly but often readily, with empire building and mercantile capitalism. Simultaneously, Calvinism became entangled with societies around the world as encounters with indigenous societies shaped the development of European religious and intellectual history. Though historians have traditionally treated the Protestant and European expansion as unrelated developments, the global reach of Dutch Calvinism offers a unique opportunity to understand the intermingling of a Protestant faith, commerce, and empire.

This paper explores Romans 8:28-31 in the light of Calvinist and Arminian soteriology by examining how the doctrine of the eternal security or assurance of salvation reaffirms a believer’s inability to lose salvation. The study adopts a historical-critical method to reassess heated arguments triggered in Christian circles that have been lingering hitherto. The impossibility and possibility of a believer being secured eternally or losing salvation inhabit opposite polemical poles on the theological gamut. Consistently, the balance is distressed whenever one tries to stress one over the other. God predestined people consistent with His foreknowledge regarding their future choices. This idea stems from several passages of scripture that contain the concept of God’s foreknowledge. Is it thinkable for a person who is sincerely born of God to lose their place of salvation and be ultimately lost, or is this an impossibility based on the sovereign work of God in salvation? Contrary positions are often mimicked, variant interpretations of Scripture merely declared spurious, and the Christian integrity of those who hold other opinions impugned. Interlaced into any construct on eternal security is a tapestry of other theological themes including but not limited to; election, assurance, grace, atonement, justification, and sanctification. The study found out that what God begins he will infallibly bring to gracious future completion. The paper reveals that salvation granted to a believer by God’s sovereign choice predestined through His foreknowledge is eternally secured and cannot be lost therefore apostasy is not thinkable.

The present study examines the dilemma of the Calvinists living in Transcarpathia (which became part of the Soviet Union in 1946) that arose following its annexation to the Soviet Empire. The problem was caused by the fact that among the Protestant denominations in the Soviet Union in 1946-47, only Evangelical Christians-Baptists (ECB) had state registration, i.e. a legal operating licence. The study aims at revealing the dialectics of the dilemma arising among the Calvinists, according to which, in order to survive, they should either align with the ECB (i.e. imperial expectations) or, alternatively, even take the risk of termination and maintain their denominational separation. In addition, the research brings insights into how the choice of the Calvinists was influenced by the denominational autonomy and national traditions that had been enjoyed until then. The state authorities would have provided a chance for an easier and routine-like solution of the problem and classify the nearly 80,000 Reformed community members in Transcarpathia as ECB. However, the case generated an unexpected problem even in the Soviet bureaucratic system as the denominational affiliation was also linked to the issue of nationality. Therefore, at the state level, it was a problem of both a religious belief and national belonging. Likewise, the study highlights the extent to which the response of the religious minority in the present case was about religious affiliation and ethnicity. Finally, the present paper considers how the state’s primary project had ultimately changed when exploring the dilemma and what conclusions and outcomes it entailed.

The Science of the Soulchallenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s.In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine.In this way, the \"science of the soul\" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation.

In August 2015, a group of pastors and elders from an urban house church in Chengdu, Sichuan, posted 95 theses online. This bold move, challenging the state and the Chinese churches has created controversy in China and abroad. The theses address a series of issues on sovereignty and authority with regard to God, the church and the government. This article considers briefly the historical and theological resemblances to Luther’s act, then examines three of the most controversial aspects of the document: its analysis of church–state relations, its rejection of the “sinicization” of Christianity, and its excoriation of the state-registered church. Of these three, the article focuses on church–state relations, since perspectives on the state church and sinicization stem from the same arguments. The article shows how the thinking of this Reformed church and its senior pastor Wang Yi draws on a particular reading of the bible, church tradition, and the role of conscience, and traces these to pastor Wang Yi’s earlier writings and his reading of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed thought.

According to some, God chose who would be saved and where they would spend eternity before the world's foundations were laid. Some theologians accept these concepts, known as Election and Predestination, while others reject them. A variety of groups, including Five-point Calvinists, Double Predestination believers, and Arminians, hold opposing views on these ideas. A solid understanding of the doctrine of Election will help a Christian believer understand God's grace and mercy. However, it is critical that this understanding is founded on biblical truth, as both ideas are directly from the Bible. The Scriptures and both ancient and modern theologians clearly establish a case that Election and Predestination are a source of God’s grace and mercy. This work will assist readers in developing a greater appreciation for God's graciousness and mercy.

Religious socialization is a process familiarizing children with the basics of religiosity, with prayers and ethical norms practiced within the Christian confessions. Our paper presents the peculiarities of religious socialization in Diosig, a village in Western-Romania, inhabited predominantly by ethnic Hungarian Calvinists. We present the historical alternations of the religious education and socialization, and the structural characteristics of the various time-periods in the last 70 years. The main purpose of the paper is to present alternations occurred in the religious socialization of the Calvinist community in Diosig since the middle of the past century until today. Therefore, we analyze the primary and the secondary spheres of religious socialization, such as the family, the school and the church, focusing on the elements playing a key role in the process of learning religious behavior, such as prayers, which define and consolidate the individuals` religiosity. The research extends over the ethnic Hungarian Calvinist community of the settlement. It turns out from the interviews that the family is the sphere of socialization where the most important norms, values and attitudes are passed on, and thus the family plays a vital role in the religiosity of the individuals. However, as time went by, the religious socialization went gradually out from the sphere of the family, and the school and the church became more and more important in this respect. The religious forms of knowledge, especially the prayers are today passed on primarily in the secondary sphere of socialization, in the frame of the religious education in kindergarten, school, and church-provided Bible lessons. Thus, these occasions mean the real beginning of the children`s religious education.