User:Jfhutson/reformed

The definitions and boundaries of the terms Reformed Christianity and Calvinism are contested by scholars. As a historical movement, Reformed Christianity began during the Reformation with Huldrych Zwingli in Zürich, Switzerland. Following the failure of the Marburg Colloquy between Zwingli's followers and those of Martin Luther in 1529 to mediate disputes regarding the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, Reformed Protestants were defined by their opposition to Lutherans. The Reformed also opposed Anabaptist radicals thus remaining within the Magisterial Reformation. During the seventeenth-century Arminian Controversy, followers of Jacobus Arminius were forcibly removed from the Dutch Reformed Church for their views regarding predestination and salvation, and thenceforth Arminians would be considered outside the pale of Reformed orthodoxy, though some use the term Reformed to include Arminians, while using the term Calvinist to exclude Arminians.

Reformed Christianity also has a complicated relationship with Anglicanism, the branch of Protestantism originating in the Church of England. Leaders of the English Reformation, were influenced by Reformed, rather than Lutheran theologians, but the Church of England retained elements of Catholicism such as bishops and vestments, unlike most Reformed churches, and thus was sometimes called "but halfly Reformed." Beginning in the seventeenth century, Anglicanism broadened to the extend that Reformed theology is no longer dominant in Anglicanism.

Today, some scholars argue that Reformed Baptists, who hold many of the same beliefs as Reformed Christians but not infant baptism, should be considered part of Reformed Christianity, though this would not have been the view of early modern Reformed theologians.