I tell my students that folks often just make up things about Calvinists. We're the convenient whipping boys of the modern period. The great thing is that one can get away with making up stuff Calvinists and Calvinism at will. About what other group could one just make things up and print them in public without any fear of social, academic, or intellectual reprisal? It happens routinely in the academic literature and it happens about as often in the popular press. I remember Phil Ryken pointing out some slur against the Puritans in Sports Illustrated back in the early 90s.

I know this is true because I've seen it and it's been documented by lots of writers. Nevertheless, what I have seen folk say about us has been so outrageous that I sometimes lose confidence that it really happened. I think that it might just be my fevered imagination. Then I stumbled onto a post at Colossians Three Sixteen which had a link to an op-ed piece by Garrison Keillor. The op-ed was really just another screed about the president. In order to discredit the president and the Republicans he links them to Calvinists. He argues that the Republicans are as arrogant as he thinks Calvinists must be. A priori reasoning is a great relief from real thinking.

I like Keillor's radio show and have read all his novels (a couple of which are as tedious as his politics) and it's pretty clear from the essay that he doesn't know beans about American history or the history of theology. So why do I care? Well, it's interesting that, in order to make his political point, he chose to associate his political opponents with the most reviled group in modern American history: the Calvinists.

He probably thinks that most of the Calvinists are dead. My college history prof was shocked that there were still living Calvinists. I can understand why he might think that we're all dead. We took a beating in the 16th century. Most of the French Calvinists were wiped out in about a week in 1572. Philip II killed thousands of Protestants in the Netherlands in the 16th century. Today there are only about 500,000 confessional Calvinists in North America today.

Calvinism, however, is doing pretty well elsewhere. There may be about a million in parts of Nigeria. There are perhaps 50,000 or more in the Congo. Though Calvinism hasn't fared well in the UK since the 18th century, there are still quite a few in the Netherlands.

That Keillor feels free to caricature Calvinism says something about our invisibility in the culture.