John Calvin, Jews, and Judaism: A Complex Relationship

UNLEARN Week is our kickoff event for our year-round program series: UNLEARN 365. During this week, we will be providing a safe campus-wide forum for conversations designed to UNLEARN biases and promote biblical antiracism.

Presenter: Karin Maag  (Director, Meeter Center for Calvin Studies)

In Reformation Europe, one of the most prevalent and challenging encounters when it came to diversity was between Christians and Jews. Christians (whether Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptists, or others) were the vast majority, with Jewish populations making up only about three to four percent of Europe’s population. This engaging presentation will concentrate on the Genevan Reformer John Calvin’s complex relationship with Jews and Judaism, focusing both on perceptions and realities of Jewish-Christian relations in the Reformation era, and on implications for Jewish-Christian relations today.