John Calvin: Patron Saint of the Recession?

(Politics Daily) - John Calvin turned 500 Friday and he's probably never looked better. This makeover is no mean feat, not just because Calvin is so old, but because for most of that time he has been identified -- with some justification, so to speak -- with the most dour form of Christianity. Or, as religion writer Ray Waddle puts it, "religion that won't dance."
... But perhaps we shouldn't try to tame Calvin too much. In the current economic climate, the man credited with shaping a sober form of capitalism -- Calvin's thought lay behind Max Weber's landmark 1905 study, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" -- may have more to say to us today than ever. Calvin's fierce writings against materialism, and his equation of theft with murder, and the rich with thieves, certainly strike a satisfying chord as we look around at the Bernie Madoffs of the world. "Calvin said if you have so much then you probably stole it!" as Stanley Hauerwas, the quotable theologian and social ethicist at Duke -- and fan of Calvin --put it to me. Continued