Alec Ryrie Quotes

John Calvin, brought characteristic rigor to the question. Luther dreamed of good princes, disliked law on principle, and had little interest in institutions. As a result, Lutheran churches ended up with a mishmash of governing structures. Calvin, by contrast, had trained as a lawyer, knew that structures matter, and favored more participatory government.

That we should all have a say in choosing our own rulers and that those rulers 'powers over us should be limited - these principles are in obvious tension, as every society that has tried to combine liberty and democracy has discovered. Without Protestantism and its peculiar preoccupations, that strange and marvelous synthesis could never have come into being as it has.

We cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.

Protestants are Christians whose religion derives ultimately from Martin Luther's rebellion against the Catholic Church. They are a tree with many tangled branches but a single trunk.

The kind of sociopolitical structure that Protestantism engenders - based on free inquiry, participatory politics, and limited government - tends to favor market economics.

The simple justification for the elders and their work was Christ's detailed prescription in Matthew's Gospel for how Christians should deal with sinners among the faithful: first private admonition, then progressively more formal reprimands, and finally, if repentance was not forthcoming, expulsion from the community.