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An Obvious Observation (or: Whatever Happened to Calvinism?)
It’s obvious, but I forget: religion and philosophy are about self-improvement. Nowhere is this more apparent than in what happened to Calvinism in the United States.
What?
Yes, that Calvin.
And that Arminius.
No, I’m not one of those who thinks that the United States was in any way a “Christian” nation in the beginning, though even the most liberal founders were only a teensey-weensey bit post-Christian (read Deism). However, our founding documents show that a majority of the founding Europeans did understand that a theocracy would be a disaster or European proportions.
That said, from the beginning, the European Christian battle between Calvinism and Arminianism has been the center of what we Americans are. Despite what can quickly become a dense (and for most of us, boring) theological discussion, I think that it comes down to two ways of being: stay-in-your-lane versus self-improvement.
For Calvinists, reality is a steady-state affair. God set it all in motion at the beginning, and God knew exactly how it would work out. Human beings were born saved or un-saved. Good luck as far as which number you got . . . waaay before you were born.
