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John Calvin

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From the Writer's Almanac on July 10:

It's the birthday of theologian John Calvin (books by this author), a leader of the Protestant Reformation, born in Noyon, France (1509). His teachings form the basis of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. He studied for the priesthood, but as Martin Luther's ideas spread to France, Calvin became uneasy about his Catholicism. When he was 22, he experienced a "conversion," in which he felt that God had called him to forsake the Catholic Church. He went to Switzerland and wrote Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), and it became a rallying point for Protestants all over Europe.

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