Page "Calvinism" Paragraph 3

The rising importance of the Reformed churches and of Calvin belongs to the second phase of the Protestant Reformation.

Evangelical churches began to form after Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

Calvin was a French exile in Geneva.

He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as it was revised by Melanchthon in 1540.

However, his influence was first felt in the Swiss Reformation whose leader was Huldrych Zwingli.

It soon became evident that doctrine in the Reformed churches was developing in a direction independent of Martin Luther's, under the influence of numerous writers and reformers among whom Calvin eventually became preeminent.

Much later, when his fame was attached to the Reformed churches, their whole body of doctrine came to be called " Calvinism ".