In today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, professor David Skeel wrote an article noting several events this month recognizing the legacy of John Calvin and the juxtaposition between his life and the life of Charles Darwin. He gave special note to the Reformation 500 Celebration, as quoted below.

If the Calvin of “Calvin 500” was nuanced and traditional, the other major celebration in the month of Calvin’s birth offered an American Calvin for the masses. Held in the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, the “Reformation 500” celebration featured more than 40 re-enactors who portrayed Calvin and other Reformation leaders, as well as such American colonial figures as George Washington and Samuel Adams. Lest any of the 1,000 attendees miss Calvin’s influence on American democracy, one of the lectures was titled “John Calvin: America’s First Founding Father,” and the conference “culminated on July 4,” as a Christian Newswire account put it, “with the tolling of an exact replica of America’s Liberty Bell.”

Aimed at families who homeschool their children or send them to Christian schools, Reformation 500 also featured a Children’s Parade through Boston’s Public Garden and three different lectures on “The Reformers’ Doctrine of the Family.” “Reformation 500” also included a debate between re-enacters of Calvin and Charles Darwin that emphasized the implications of their respective world views—Calvin’s an influence “for great good and the glory of God,” according to Doug Phillips, the conference organizer, and Darwin’s “for unimaginable evil.” . . .

See the entire article at The Wall Street Journal’s web site.