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Background
Christianity
St. Augustine
The Reformation
Five Solas
Synod of Dort
The rising importance of the Reformed churches, and of Calvin, belongs to the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form after Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Calvin was a French exile in Geneva. He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as it was revised by Melancthon in 1540, but his influence was first felt in the Swiss Reformation, which was not Lutheran, but rather followed Huldrych Zwingli. It became evident early on that doctrine in the Reformed churches was developing in a direction independent of Luther's, under the influence of numerous writers and reformers, among whom Calvin eventually became pre-eminent. Much later, when his fame was attached to the Reformed churches, their whole body of doctrine came to be called "Calvinism". Although much of Calvin's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a correctly reformed church to many parts of Europe. Calvinism became the theological system of the majority in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany (especially those adjacent to the Netherlands) and was influential in France, Hungary, then-independent Transylvania, Lithuania and Poland. Calvinism gained some popularity in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but was rejected in favor of Lutheranism after the synod of Uppsala in 1593. Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the Puritans and French Huguenot and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York). Dutch Calvinist settlers were also the first successful European colonizers of South Africa, beginning in the 17th century, who became known as Boers or Afrikaners.
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