Convincing Berkeley Students To Engage With John Calvin, Even Though They Despise Everything The Man Stood For

“In my history of Christianity course, we read a number of challenging writers. Each one I ask students to read with as much sympathy, charity and critical perspective as they can muster. But nothing outrages them – not the writings of Augustine or Erasmus or Luther – more than two or three pages of John Calvin”, the “Ayatollah of Geneva.”