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51 The political implications of Bullinger’s and Calvin’s theologies now deserve a more intentional analysis. Their legacies remain in a state of both competition and cooperation throughout the Anglo-American experience. Only by continuing to view them side-by-side can one fully appreciate the development of the Reformed Protestant inheritance for politics. Looking at the circumstances of the mid–sixteenth century, one would not expect that Calvin and Bullinger should loom large in the political heritage of Britain and America. Neither held any official civil office in their own citystates . Calvin was hardly the powerful theocrat that some have cast him to be. It would have been hard to wield any legal authority when he was not even offered Genevan citizenship in 1559, five years before his death. For most of his time in Geneva, Calvin was the victim of anti-French sentiment and often found his plans thwarted by the city authorities of Bern (with whom Geneva held an important political alliance).1 Bullinger was more popular than Calvin, and the pastors in Zurich enjoyed more independence than did those in Geneva in setting “official” church doctrine.2 But like Calvin, Bullinger did not hold any civil authority. And in neither city did the church hold the independent excommunication power that the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy had used to influence civil authorities in Catholic realms. Nevertheless, both Bullinger and Calvin arguably shaped political thinking across the Protestant realms more than did philosophers, statesmen, diplomats, or armies. Ironically, their legacies of influence were guaranteed by the persecuting policies of a Catholic monarch, Mary Tudor, who drove her Protestants into the waiting arms of the reformers on the continent. While on the Continent in exile, these English and Scottish reformers would be deeply influenced by their time in Protestant strongholds such as Zurich and Geneva. They would later return to Scotland and England to continue the work of reformation. Regime, Discipline, and Resistance The Covenant and the Civil Magistrate 5 52 POLITICS REFORMED THE CHURCH’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE The vital church-state questions at the time of Bullinger and Calvin consisted of church polity and church discipline (excommunication), worship (ritual and vestments), and sacraments. Presupposing there was a Christian magistrate, Bullinger recognized that magistrate’s right to determine certain religious questions . This minimized but did not eliminate any right of excommunication by church leaders. In the English controversies, Bullinger did not flinch at the royal supremacy asserted by Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I. Rejecting any adversarial approach taken by dissenting clergy, Bullinger in his political theology emphasized community and reconciliation. Zurich was cast as a traditional corpus christianum (Christian body) wherein the church and state were partners. Through their role as prophets and evangelists, the clergy served only to influence the magistrate but never themselves to rule.3 Bullinger did not insist upon an ecclesiastical discipline in opposition to the authority of the civil magistrate. This mercifully saved Zurich from a host of embroilments and saved the clergy from being viewed as competitors by the civil magistrates. This might seem to have diminished the clergy’s power in Zurich. From Bullinger’s position, however, it maintained their integrity as prophetic voices within the civil realm. It also stood in contrast to the papacy’s previous interference in civil polities. Calvin asserted the need for a more independent church, though the church was hardly without civil support. And though Calvin did not seek a “purified” church on the Anabaptist model, he did want to cleanse the church and its communion of those living in unrepentant sin. Calvin’s ideal church-state relationship is unclear. He certainly did not confuse their respective authorities or assert that the punishment and justice of one should stand in for the other (Institutes IV.xi.3, 441–42). But the line between civil piety and pious orthodoxy was not always clear. On the one hand, Calvin expected the civil magistrate to be a partner of the church (IV.xx.9, 657–58).4 The civil magistrate in Geneva both exiled and executed heretics, though not necessarily for heresy itself so much as for heresy’s presumed relationship to civil discord. On the other hand, Calvin argued that civil laws do not touch the conscience, and particularly not when they concern “necessary” religious matters. Bullinger’s ideal is not precisely clear either, apart from vague prohibitions against “any new religions” or altering...

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