Calvinism was named by its Lutheran opponents, and Calvin disliked the label
Lutherans coined the word Calvinism in the 1550s, and not as a compliment. Calvin himself objected, and modern scholars call the label misleading, since the movement began with Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich and was shaped by many hands. Its followers preferred a humbler self-description: simply the Reformed Church.
Reformed Christianity is the branch of Protestantism now carried by Continental Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregational churches, along with parts of the Anglican, Baptist and Waldensian worlds and a small group of Calvinistic Methodists. It stresses biblical authority, God's sovereignty and covenant theology, which reads scripture through God's successive agreements with humanity. Worship is kept deliberately plain.
The decisive split with Luther came over the Lord's Supper. At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 the two camps failed to agree on how Christ is present. Lutherans affirmed a bodily presence; the Reformed side settled on a real but spiritual presence, a view articulated by Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger. The 1549 Consensus Tigurinus reconciled Zwingli's memorial view with Calvin's. Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, written between 1536 and 1539, became among the most influential books of the age.
Borders were drawn in the Netherlands. In the 17th century Jacobus Arminius and his Remonstrant followers were expelled from the Dutch Reformed Church for their views on predestination, and the resulting Canons of Dort supplied the famous five points of Calvinism. The Church of England, whose reformer Thomas Cranmer counted among Reformed theologians, kept bishops and vestments, earning the jibe but halfly Reformed. Some argue Particular Baptists, who reject infant baptism, belong in the family; others disagree.
The social footprint is large. Historians credit Calvinist ethics, prizing hard work and trade within moral limits, with helping lay the groundwork for modern capitalism in Northern Europe and the United States. Elected elders and mixed church government fed into early democratic habits, the separation of powers and protection for religious minorities, influencing North American colonies and English liberal thought. Calvinist reformers also pushed causes from abolition to women's suffrage and education.
Source: Reformed Christianity
