"Having made the basic analogy between Puritan New England and ancient Israel, some extended the comparison even further, to speculate about the perhaps decisive place of the American colonies in sacred history. In Calvinist interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, Israel was usually portrayed as a nation chosen by God to preserve his law until His Son arrived to purify and promulgate it throughout the world. Israel was thus a divine crucible and a providential conduit for the gospels. And so, it seemed, was America--a nation chosen by God to proclaim the repristinized Christianity of the Protestant Reformation to all peoples."
On the eve of John Calvin's five hundredth birthday, Damon Linker in The New Republic traces the theologian's impact on American ideology.
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