This week in Christian history: Nabeel Qureshi dies; John Calvin returns to Geneva
John Calvin returns to Geneva – Sept. 13, 1541
This week marks the anniversary of when John Calvin, the influential Protestant Reformation theologian, returned to the city of Geneva after being expelled from the city three years earlier.
Calvin had been expelled from Geneva in 1538 when he and other clergy refused to administer communion on Easter Sunday over disputes about how to reform the Swiss city.
Eventually, however, the Geneva City Council changed course and implored Calvin to return. After much open hesitation, the author of Institutes of the Christian Religion would agree.
“He picked-up his preaching exactly where he had left off two and half years prior,” wrote Marcus J. Serven of The Geneva Foundation in 2020.
“Over the next twenty-three years of Calvin’s ministry … Geneva became widely known as the foremost city of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin’s continual ministry of preaching, teaching, catechizing, writing, counseling, and discipling brought about so many changes for good that the general population in time came to greatly appreciate him.”
