Whether in America or my own country of England, Calvinism is often a dirty word, even amongst professors of faith.  How little they know what they revile, and how  much they, as well as the rest of us, owe to the legacy of John Calvin, and those who came after him and fought and died for the same things he believed—i.e. Biblical Christianity– for the liberty and freedom of and in religion we now have.

Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I, and landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble reformer on the shore of Lake Leman. —J.H. Merle D’Aubigne

The earliests and most influential settlers of the United States—the Puritans of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland and Ireland, the Huguonts of France, the Reformed from Holland and the Palatinate—were Calvinists, and brought with them the Bible and the Reformed Confessions of fatih. Calvinism was the ruling theology of New England during the whole Colonial period.–Philip Schaff