This is a great subject. This is a fantastic subject. With such a grand theme and with so much great historical material to work with this should be an inspiring and a stirring book. Unfortunately, the book is somewhat of a disappointment. That does not mean that this is not a good book. And it doesn’t mean that it is not worth reading. It merely means that the book does rise to the greatness of the subject matter it deals with. In short the book fails to live up to its potential.

The book has basically four chapters. They are titled as follows…

· Calvinism as a Political Force.

· Calvinism as a Political Force in the History of the United States.

· Calvinism as a Moral Force

· Calvinism as an Evangelizing Force

The best chapter is undoubtedly the first. The impact of Calvinism, an impact that produced a tremendous amount of good, on the politics of the Netherlands, of Scotland, and of England is too comprehensive and stirring not to make great impression on the reader. The complementary chapter on its political impact on the history of the United States, though setting forth many salient facts documenting the debt that this nation owes to Calvinism for its very existence, is somewhat marred by the concerns aired below. The chapter on Calvinism as a moral force, while accurately documenting the historical power of Calvinism to uplift a nation morally, suffers from a rather poorly done effort to set forth an explanation why Calvinist theology should have such an effect. The final chapter suffers from similar concerns.

The book’s greatest deficiency, and it is a significant one that mars it’s overall effect and undermines its credibility, is the author’s tendency to overreach and thereby overstate his case. An example is in order, taken from the chapter on "Calvinism as a Political Force in the History of the United States." Now Calvinism was undoubtedly the ideological engine of the American revolution. The King’s advisers in Britain virtually called it a "Presbyterian revolt." Bancroft says that at the time of the American revolution the nation was 98% Protestant and 66% Calvinist. Calvinist ministers were in the forefront of the ideological struggle for liberty. Nonetheless, it was with the essential aid of France that the British were defeated and Cornwallis compelled to surrender at Yorktown. What does McFetridge have to say about that. Well, it is rather astounding…

"France, too, was aglow with the free, bounding, restless spirit of Calvinism—where Rousseau…was conducting…the same political warfare as that in America…Thus Calvinism in Europe and Calvinism in America were leagued together for the promotion of the one great purpose" (pp. 66-67).

Now this is palpable nonsense. The Calvinist Reformation in Geneva swept through France as well and had a powerful impact. The Huguenots, the French Calvinists, became a powerful faction in the nation. They almost prevailed and made France a Calvinist state. Their political leader, Henry the Fourth, the Huguenot King of Navarre converted to Catholicism to unite the nation upon ascending to the throne of France, but his famous Edict of Nantes procured religious liberty for the Calvinists. When a century later Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes it ushered in horrendous persecution of the Huguenots, driving many of them to emigrate and destroying those that remained as a force in the nation. From that point on the Huguenots were a negligible part of French society and France returned to being a strict Catholic state. This set the stage for the religious and civil tyranny that finally erupted in the cataclysm of the French Revolution. To therefore say that the ancien regime under Louis XVI, that supported the colonies in their bid for independence was a Calvinist state is so ridiculous as to be beyond absurd. And to lump the philosophes of the French Revolution, such as Rousseau, with the Calvinist leaders of the American Revolution is a travesty of the truth. The French revolutionaries were secular humanists who wanted to extirpate Christianity, and the French Revolution was an atheistic one that was a prototype for the Bolshevik Revolution that plunged Russia into a secularized tyranny for most of the twentieth century.

Similarly, he cites Germany as an example, stating…

"The Calvinistic philosophy had also taken a firm hold of the popular mind in Germany, where Kant, imbued with its liberty loving spirit, was loosening the foundations of despotism…" (p. 66)

Now this is also manifestly untrue. The Lutheran reformation was accomplished by the support of the Protestant princes of the various German states, and had few political implications. Lutheranism did not establish republics and liberate men from the submission to hereditary monarchs and an established nobility. Lutheran states remained for the most part medieval monarchies. Additionally, to present the philosopher Immanuel Kant as a Calvinist seems rather incredible. Again McFetridge has strained our credibility with his overreaching.

Thus, in spite of a glowing introduction by the editor of the series, Reg Barrow, quoting encomiums for the book by Lorraine Boettner and Rousas Rushdoony, the book remained, for me at least, a disappointment. The book references such inspired writing on the subject as Daubigne’s histories of the Reformation and Motley’s histories of the Dutch republic, but its own insipid prose fails to rise to their level, and stir the reader with what God hath wrought in history through the faith of the Calvinists. Unfortunately, most people will never take the time to read the lengthy works noted above. Which leaves me with the conclusion, that a short book (this one consists of 113 pages) that does justice to the subject is just waiting to be either written or reprinted. Hopefully, that challenge will be taken up in the near future by someone who is saddened by the abysmal ignorance of this generation of the theological foundations for their liberties, prosperity, and indeed for all that they have historically held dear.