In his Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952), J. L. Talmon described the French Revolution as the harbinger of modern forms of both liberal democracy and totalitarian fascism. The political ideas of the French Revolution, said Talmon, were sufficiently “protean” and “provocative” to guide these juxtaposed political movements along paths that the philosophes could never have anticipated. A Lincoln and a Marx, a Roosevelt and a Mussolini could all take inspiration from the core teachings of the French Revolution.

An analogous claim can be made about the Calvinist Reformation. This Protestant movement first broke out in Geneva under the leadership of the French theologian and jurist, John Calvin (1509–1564), and then swept over large parts of France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and North America in the next 250 years. Calvin's original political ideas were also sufficiently “protean” and “provocative” to inspire a wide range of both totalitarian and democratic tendencies. It is easy enough to expose the totalitarian tendencies of many leading Calvinists – Calvin himself, Theodore Beza, Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Rutherford, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and their ample modern progeny. It is easy enough to compile an ample list of victims who were reviled, censored, imprisoned, tortured, banished, and even executed by Calvinists for their religious beliefs – Michael Servetus, Jean Morély, Jacob Arminius, Hugo Grotius, Richard Overton, John Lilburne, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson, to name a few.