Summary: This episode of CS is titled “The School of Christ” and is part 2 in our look at the Reformer, John Calvin. We left off last time with John Calvin back in Geneva after being banished for a few years following a run in with the City Council. They realized how much they needed him to design the reforms they felt they had to make so they asked him to return and accommodated themselves to being the agents by which his plans could be implemented along civil lines. Social welfare in Geneva was charged to the church’s deacons. They were the hospital management board, social security executives, and alms-house supervisors. The deacons were so effective at administering these welfare programs, Geneva had no beggars. When the Scotsman John Knox visited Geneva in 1554, he wrote a friend that the city was à “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.” (more…)
