Lecture to celebrate John Calvin's 500th birthday

Northwestern College will celebrate John Calvin’s 500th birthday with a special lecture on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. in Christ Chapel. Dr. Scott Manetsch, a former Northwestern professor who is a Reformation history expert on the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, will speak on “Pastoral Care and Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva.”

The service will include two selections from the Genevan Psalter sung by Northwestern’s A cappella Choir and a question/answer session following Manetsch’s lecture. The event is free and open to the public.

Manetsch joined Trinity’s church history faculty in 2000 after teaching for three years at Northwestern College. His research on the theology and practice of pastoral ministry in Reformation Europe has been presented at scholarly conferences in Switzerland, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Author of Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572-1598, Manetsch has written articles for such journals as Church History and Westminster Theological Journal. His monograph, One Venerable Company: Pastoral Care and Clerical Culture in Calvinist Geneva, 1559-1609, is slated for completion next year. 

The associate general editor of the Reformation Commentary Series, published by InterVarsity Press, Manetsch also serves as an editor of the Christ on Campus Initiative. He is a member of the Calvin Studies Society, Sixteenth Century Studies Society and the American Society of Church History.

Manetsch earned a doctorate in late medieval and Reformation history at the University of Arizona. As part of his doctoral studies, he spent two years at the University of Geneva on a Fulbright fellowship. A former associate pastor at a Reformed Church in America congregation in the Chicago area, Manetsch earned a Master of Divinity degree and a master’s in Christian thought/church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He did his undergraduate study at Michigan State University.