Fin vs History - Calvin Goes Acoustic | The Reformation (Part 3/4)

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

 This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark.     Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at https://surfshark.com/fvh  Thou Shalt Commit Adultery. The Reformation (Part Three) The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.   For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon  ⁠patreon.com/fintaylor  Chapters: 00:00 - He Is The Architect  04:54 - Boom AI 10:01 -  It’s Their Harvest 14:29 - Men Love Stats 18:57 - He’s A White Slave 25:56 - Knox Is Immodium 29:11 - The First Emo 36:47 - Awooo!  40:30 - The Worst Bible  44:09 - We’re All Jackie Weaver Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Finn versus history. Joining me to Ray Show Gould. Hello. And this is an urgent discussion on Calvin, Knox, and our true intellectual heirs. Yeah. When you say urgent, you mean that this is... Urgent. I need to get this out.

All right, okay. I'm fired up. Yeah, you're on the toilet. I'm on the toilet. I'm on the toilet. I'm on the toilet. I need to talk about John Knox. Yeah.

And John Calvin. This has really fired you up. This is. In between these episodes, you were rifling through it. You're giggling to yourself. You're like a man, man. This is my heritage. This is my psychological architecture.

Right. He is the architect. You know at the end of the matrix where he meets the architect? Yeah. That's me meeting John Calvin. Because I'm only, there's only a little bit of me.

So it's only, it only explains a very small part of me. But for you, this is, this is everything. This is all of me. I read John Calvin and I just did all make sense. Right. With part three of our series on the Reformation,

we've dealt with Martin Luther. Done. Done. We've dealt with him. Done. It sounds like he've killed him. We've killed Luther. Now, the piece of his story.

of Augsburg is where we left off last time. An easy truce between Lutherans and Catholics. But it left out Calvinism. Now who, what, why... Calvin in the chipmunks.

Is Calvin the chipmunks? Jean-Calvin, unbelievably, he's French. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe this. Because I always thought he was a Swiss fuck. But it turns out that hidden.

amongst in the toilet. What I will say is that he's the bravest Frenchman who's ever lived. And he's the only French man whose hand I'd like to shake. Jean de Calvin but his name has been anglicised because it makes more sense

in English than French. Jean Calvin does not make sense. It's John Calvin. It's not John Pork, Charlie. I love John de Calvin. John Calvin. In the same way that when I watched the Manosphere documentary,

I was like, this is such an Anglo-American thing. I can't imagine a French man's feeling. Oh, the dirty bitch, look at my money. Oh, Jean-Claude. Like, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't work. Does it?

The little French kissing. Protestant, manisphere in some ways. Yes. It's about the hustle grind set. Yes. Taking, going outside the Matrix, Catholic Church, as you were saying. Yeah. That's what Andrew Tate's saying.

Basically grabbing your own life by the bootstraps. And we are all fallen. We're all neo in the fucking thing. What was up to us, how we live. Exactly. In France, it's the muscle wine set. The muscle wine set, rather than the hustle grind set.

What's the muscle, like, is it in muscles to food? More free. Right, yeah. Is it a muscle wine set? I think hustle wine set is probably better. No, I like muscle. Muscle, but yeah.

Is it muscles? Yeah, I guess so. It sounds like it's too much like that. I think it's that they're waking up drinking one. Truffle wine set's quite good. Truffle wine set is good. It's less hustle grindsette more truffle wineset. That's good.

That is good. It's good. It's good. A couple of plays and misses, but we got there. You've had a couple of misses this series, but you've opened this episode with a corker. A crisp one, yeah. So Jean de Calvin, the bravest Frenchman,

the only brave Frenchman, you could say. The only one you could shake his hand without surrendering. Exactly, yeah, you go to shake his hand and he actually shakes it. Oh, no, please, I'm sorry, take it, take my wife, please. He does not have springs under his arms.

He has no movement in his arms. His arms don't move. No. He's completely disabled. Stephen Hawkins. Hawkins. The most Froston man

that's ever lived. Stephen Hawkins. I mean, that guy can't surrender. No, and he lives

a very Calvinist life. Well, well, there's not much, um, not much pleasure. Let's get a photo

of him up on E.C.'s I thought was AI. No, yeah. This is the first time I've been tricked by thinking

something there's real was definitely AI. This is, this is a, this is Hawking. Let's get with bikinis, bikini girls.

Yeah, I mean, when you first found out that Hawcom was there, you're like, well, I'm sure it was something else. I'm sure it's not what I'm imagining.

Because what I'm imagining is two bikini gals with cocktails and him in the middle. This is John Calvin when he goes to Rome. Was this him talking to other Catholics? Yeah, people in Switzerland are like, hang on, how are you? I can't imagine you going there. You don't make sense there. And he's like, I had a fucking great time. I had a holiday for myself.

Anyway. So who is John Calvin? Now, he's the, he's sort of the unsung here. of the Protestant Reformation. He is the Claude McAlele of the Protestant Reformation. Sure. So he doesn't get his flowers. Does not get his flowers and he doesn't want flowers. Put them in the bin.

He wants just a dry piece of wood or something. Calvin is, he sees what Luther's doing. And if Luther's a monk, Calvin is a lawyer. Okay. In that he's trying to implement a society based on Luther's teachings. Right. Okay. Which Luther isn't doing.

Luther's all about faith in the book. Yes. But Calvin's like, yeah, but how can we actually make this civilization? How can we implement it? He's getting off the toilet. Off the toilet, let's get on with it. We've done. Pooh, flush, wipe next.

Done. Yeah. So Calvin is born in 1509. He's a lawyer and he's in sort of northern France. And he converts to Protestantism. And bear mind, Switzerland, which is where he'll make his name, that's in the Holy Roman Empire. And that's a bunch of city states. Yeah.

So it's just as loose. as Germany. France is a big power. And again, this is a very confusing time. There is a great battle for the soul of France. There's a significant chance in the 16th century that France will ultimately be Protestant. I know. The French Huguenots.

Which is just, I mean the past, imagine, the sliding doors moment. It does a beth thinking about. Where would England go to forget itself if France is not there? Yeah. Now, if Luther is a kind of beer drinking, sort of table-thumping, Pooey German. Calvin is frail, intensely private, chronically ill, migraines, gout, asthma.

I mean, he is sort of hawking-esque, I suppose. He only ever eats one meal a day, and he basically doesn't sleep. Right. So a sneeze could kill him. Yes. Yeah. He's very frail, but he converts to prostantism,

which is not really the done thing in France. There is a thing called the affair. of the placards. Right. So this is in the 1530s. Is it exciting as it sounds? It is riveting stuff. Yeah, no, listen.

The clash of the lanyards. Yeah, it's not, although there is a big lanyard clash culturally. Where? In that there are people who wear them who are either autistic disabled or gay.

And there's people who don't. Today, there is a clash of the lanyards. I did see, there's this telegraph podcast that's making me laugh a lot. Oh, with Camilla. Yeah, it's making me laugh. Because I don't know,

I've really been enjoying telegraph headlines and it's just, it's just, you keep sending them to, me? They're really funny. Some of them. I'll get some of them up.

But yeah, they're talking about that it's, yeah, that there's like a new class clash between the lanyards and the non-land yarded. Did they actually say that? Yeah. I was joking. Christ. Yeah, no, it's great. They're saying this with a very intellectual, intelligent way, everything that we joke about.

And basically the hatred for Kier Starm is because he represents the land yard class. I see. And that's kind of the new division. And it's the land yard class. They're the ones who slow down the bureaucratic, they're the kind of, oh, you can't wear that. And there are a lot of jobs worth, we're given that. There's a lot of times in this country that I do feel like you jobs worth swine. Yes.

I want to get, we need to get rid of this, whatever this attitude is. Now actually I can't because of my manager. No, he wouldn't. Yes. What? Is that what your cinema? 100%. A hundred percent.

I was watching half of the latest fucking 28 years later, really enjoying it. In the best cinema, this new amazing cinema in Leicester Square. If I can finish halfway through it, just the picture went. So sorry, we're gone. I realized that it was across the road they were showing it and it started 45 minutes later we were 45 minutes film I tried to go in to see it

and they were saying sorry with the the tails close it's like dad just let us in like we told you this whole story and he says I'm like is it full he's like no there's loads of room I was like well just like let us in just let us in no because my manager might see on CCTV

I wanted to call him a swine you're a swine in a cow and did he have a lanyard on of course he did He had rectangle glasses. Right. You know that, that's like, yeah.

There's no way this person can ever think for himself. There's no free thinker. Yes. How's the rectangle? You mean like Sven Gore and Erickson? Sort of images. Scroll down. Yeah, those ones there.

See that one? No, no, that one. Yeah, there's no way that this person has had any individual thought. My father-in-law wears those glasses. And he has a lot of ideas. Okay, fine. They're mainly about bandsdowns in the Surrey area. Oh yeah, of course he's a council.

He is a councillor. And in the recent local elections, the Lib Dem had a surge. And he sent a gif on the War family WhatsApp of an AI Lib Dem bird going, ah! With yellow... Is he a Lib Dem counsellor?

Yes, he is. Oh, right. So he feels... No, it's not threatening. He's not threatened by the Lib Dem bird. Oh, right. So he's sort of like a werewolf and the moon. It's like...

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If you go to surfshark.com slash FVH or click the link below, you will get four extra months of Surfsharp. Don't let Kirstarmer's online threats catch you off guard. Keep your data safe and see you next time. Anyway, Calvin's a French lawyer who converts to Protestantism. We get to the clash of the lanyards, the affair of the placards. It's 1534.

There are Protestant reformists. They're posting placards around France, criticizing the Catholic Mass. There is no way to imbue this with any drama. Okay. This is 16th century liturgical dispirical. It could not be less relevant to anyone today. Yeah. Okay, but we have to get there to talk about our intellectual forebezz.

So the posters are titled True Articles on the Horrible Great and Unbearable Abuses of the Papal Mass. Right. So these are kind of people who are talking about Chinese organ harvesting outside the British Museum. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, there's people with like photos of like... Yeah, yeah, I do know that.

I mean, there's all around Trafalgo Square, there's like the people trying to get the Iranian royalists in. There's like people saying like convert the end is nigh. There's a whole mixture of them. I don't want to be insensitive. Sure. But where does organ harvesting

end and Chinese cuisine begin? It's the famine cuisine. They are, they're eating anything. Yeah. Right? So at what point is it just harvesting? Yeah. Don't you know they're Chinese? Yeah. It's what you should say. It's called harvesting. It's their harvest. It's how they

make food, all right? That's like protesting. So you're saying it's culturally insensitive? I think it is. It's a complaint about Chinese organ. I'm a big cultural relativist. You are. Okay?

Every culture is of equal value. Yeah. Saying you can't harvest organs in China is like saying you cannot do a wassail in a Surrey orchard. Sure. Another thing my father-in-law has massively violent opinions on. What? He's a big pro-whassail guy.

What is a was-sale? Wassail is a pagan apple harvest festival where they black-haired. Cup, but in a good way. Oh, right, positive. Positive blackface. Robert Downey Jr. stuff. Right, okay. It's so funny that it's fine.

So the affair of the placards, basically, a bunch of French Protestants, which I realize is a contradiction in terms. They put placards everywhere all over France, and the previously tolerant king, I don't know which king, he goes right. So much for the tolerant king. This is too much. Placards, are you taking the piss? and so he clamps down on the reformers

which means John Calvin flees France to Geneva now we get to Calvin in Geneva 1537 this is where he basically starts preaching his sort of sense of like more extreme Lutheranism is this the Beatles in Hamburg

yeah yeah but the opposite of that it's Dylan going electric except it's Calvin going analog. Calvin goes acoustic. Unplugs everything and goes, it's all too loud, okay? So he goes to Geneva and he starts preaching. And Calvin's big thing, okay,

is that whereas Luther said that everyone is a sinner, we're all in the gutter, but through your own internal consciousness and belief and faith, you can reach salvation. Calvin says, nah, Listen, God is all powerful. He's already decided who is going to go to heaven and who's not.

And what you can do is you can try and find signs in someone's morals or behavior if they are chosen or not. So this is the birth of fat shaming. Okay. It's fatness as a moral sin. Interesting. Calvin is going, you're not chosen for salvation

because you're fatty. That's where this starts. So would you say Britain fat families, can we get some of that up, please? Would you say this is playing on a Calvinist tradition? I'm saying it is impossible in a world without Calvin. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Okay, so it's putting all the responsibility on the person.

But it's not their fault in a way, because it's been predestined to be fat, immoral, slob. Well, in some ways, yes, but you can still work, and you should work to try and prove that God has chosen you. But if he hasn't chosen you, there's nothing you can do about it. Well, that's not a Calvinist attitude.

No. That's a Catholic attitude. Or maybe a Lutheran one. But he still thinks it's all pre-determined. So whatever happens was always going to happen. So Calvin is starting to attach morality to, and like in a religious sense, to how people act in their lives.

Right. So whereas Luther's saying it's all, internal process. The conscience. The inner conscience. Calvin's saying... Actions. Actions speak louder than words. Okay. Okay. Fridges speak louder than... It's almost like thinking is too spiritual for Calvin. Exactly.

Even that's too much. Prove yourself. I don't know what you're thinking. Yeah. How can I? I'm not a mind beater. That's magic. I can see you're very fat. Batman... What did he say? It's not who you are. But what you do that defines you. Yeah. So he's a Calvinist. It's who you eat. Yeah. It's what you eat.

So Calvin believes in, he doesn't believe in transubstantiation. So the water into white, that's all bollocks. That's all bollocks. The God and the Bible is obviously, he agrees with Luther that that's the main source. The church is bollocks. But he thinks that you should build a society where people are trying to, in a sense, prove that they're worthy of salvation. Right. Okay.

So that's where he's getting up at 4 a.m. He's Mark Wahlberg. Yes. He's the grind set. Yeah. Okay. No Catholic is getting up at 4 a.m. It is the Protestant hours.

There's no, it is. And the clock probably, they're eating dinner at 10. You get two hours apiece. You get more than that. There is a time difference between. You go around the clock. The Protestant hours are the night hours. And then at what, 10 a.m.?

You'd say the Catholic hours begin? Right. So about 10 p.m. Right. Okay. Which is where they have dinner. Yeah. But the Protestants are in bed.

They're tough. They're dinner at 6pm. Exactly. Because as Brian Johnson said. one of the most Presbyterian men there are possible. Yeah, definitely. Does not want to die. Well, the guy who measures his gum.

The guy who measures his cum is about as Presbyterian as it gets, right? Because he doesn't want to die because he thinks there's nothing there. Right. Right. So the Catholics, they're not there even done dinner too late. And what, as Brian Johnson says, you should leave about four and a half hours between your final meal and going to sleep. So this is the birth of the least spiritual people on the planet.

There's just nowhere else in the world that this. has really come at all. And I guess there's like Buddhism, which is like minimal and stuff, but this sense of earthiness and groundedness is completely unique here. Just some, just breaking news,

Brian Johnson's got some nighttime erection data from my 19 year old son. His duration is two minutes longer than mine. Raised children to stand tall, be firm and be upright. I've come around to Brian Johnson, you know. At first he pissed me off,

but I think he's now gone so far that he's quite, he's pretty good value. I think, If you're measuring your son's erections and then being kind of pissed off that they're two minutes firmer than yours. Listen, we all have, it's hard to make a relationship with father-son. You know, father-sum bonding is difficult.

If you're not football fans. If you're not football, exactly. So, you know, measuring each other's bonus is just one. And not just like how big they are, the stamina. Yeah. How are they, let's just break that. How are they, are they jacking off? Like, what are they doing to measure their, it's nighttime erection data?

I imagine, if I know Brian Johnson, he will have a custom-made ring that goes around his not. A wearable penis tracker. Penile tracker. Sorry? It's a penile tracker. A fitbit for your penis. Yeah. It's like a woop band.

Right. For your dick. A firm tech ring. So you've got father-son whoop dick bands and you're measuring each other's nighttime erections. That's Bonding. Is that a dual shot? What's that dual shot thing again? Quick shop and then you weigh your tech ring afterwards to go to bed.

Right. Yes. So I guess it's sort of the final frontier of biohacking is where you and your son pop on some tech cock rings. Wearable penal measuring rings. And then you wake up in the morning and over breakfast. You compare erection data. Men love stats. They do.

They do. They do. You know. I pray for the women in that household. I really do. Can we talk about sunning out? Please. Guys, guys, and Brian's there like,

why don't you measure your own vaginal wetness? Why don't you fucking shove a data collecting tampon up there? Yeah? Who's got the driest vagina out of both you? So Calvin believes in simplicity and worship. So he's actually the boring one. Is he the guy who comes up with this? Yeah, he's the boring one, right?

Luther's actually a bit of a laugh. Sure. Right? Yeah. Because even by the end, we didn't talk about it. He's a fat, sausage. It's really fat by the end. Beer drinking, constipated, like, laugh.

And so Calvin's seeing this being like, I don't think you're the guy, mate. You're on the toilet. You're a fat fuck stuck on the toilet. You're not Jesus. He's Elvis Presley. He's Elvis. He's German Elvis on the toilet in the 16th century,

eating burgers, right? And Calvin's going, I don't know, man. I think, so in Geneva, what he does is he basically creates the boring Protestant utopia, which is why Geneva today. is like it is.

Obsessed with time. Yeah. Clocks and accuracy. Yeah. It's like... And Swiss people are some of those boring people who ever meet. Yeah.

It's, I mean, it's the boring lands. Yeah. It's so dull. I did a tour of Switzerland like 12 years ago with Dane Baptiste. Everything works. Everything's clean. Yeah. Everything's nice.

Nothing fun. But it has no character or so. No vibe at all. It's just clocks. Yeah. Right. I did... We were driven around.

The most interesting about it was we were driven around by a guy who smoked so much weed that he also had those, he was slightly cross-sided those eyes that made you look, the glasses make your eyes look massive. But he'd look at us in the,

in the, with you mirror, and he'd be talking about, like, conspiracy theories, how, like, the government were out to get him and tried to move to Switzerland and stuff.

But, like, his eyes were, like, flooding the fucking rear-view mirror. He's out of it. He was the most interesting about Switzerland. It's so dull. But that's because Calvin,

Calvin makes it this just ideal-ordered. Yeah. uncaotic society. So he gets banished from Geneva, right, quite early on. Then in 1541 he's asked to return because of this growing religious unrest in the city. And then the Council of Geneva passes the ecclesiastical ordinances based on Calvin's proposal for reform. Come with me now.

Yeah. Ladies, have you pack some spare pants. Okay. I'm sorry, I did not warn you that we were talking about the ecclesiastical ordinances of 1541. on Geneva. All right. They call for a restructuring of the Genevaan church with ministers

being split into pastors, doctors, elders and deacons. Right. Which basically means it's again it's less power in the church itself. His teachings becomes Calvinism, right?

Which is, denies that the body and blood, that's all bullocks. This then starts to... I just isn't unlikely. He's doubting those numbers. Yeah. Yeah. He's a big...

He's a... He's a... He's a... He's a... He's a... He's a Eucharist denier. He is a Euchar... Asimaya, I must say.

I'm a proud Eucharist denier. There's no way that's his body. No way. There's no way. There's no way. That's so... There's so many parts that he's... There's so much wine.

That's all his blood. Now, he's bothering about in Switzerland. Now, when he dies, he becomes... He gets buried in an unmarked grave. Of course. He's my bin Laden. because he doesn't want to become a martyr and he doesn't want to become a site of

religious pilgrimage but he says that because he doesn't want anyone, it's not about him it's about God because that's the thing is that there's not these huge figures in Protestantism in the same way, there's not cult of personalities no, it's not like people... It's the cult of no personality

no one's got loads of pictures of Calvin saying I fucking love Calvin yeah like there's none of that stuff at all I do apart from you I have a picture of Calvin in my toilet right because he's my guy Picture of Luther on the toilet in my toilet.

In my toilet, yeah. So Calvin is the guy from whom you know, you'd say anglicised Protestantism comes from. We're not Lutheran, really. We're Calvinist because a lot of

Calvinist reformers go to Britain, especially into Scotland. And this is where we get to the second hero of this story, John Knox. So John Knox. So John Knox is a Roman Catholic Minister. in, I want to say, the early 1540s.

Scott. We should place this, actually. Should we place 1540s? 1540s in Scotland. Christ. So this is after William Wallace. Yes. And it's before, I want to say it's before whiskey.

Hmm. I think we're still in pre-whisky Scotland in the 16th century. 13th to the 15th century. Damn. Is it? Yeah. Okay. Before iron brew.

It's definitely before. It's after whiskey. It's before iron brew. Yeah. 1901. Pretty old. Yeah. And when's Tisky invented?

1629. Shit. So it's after whiskey before Tisky. Charlie got another rhyming one in. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Tisky 1629. I love Tisky.

I fucking love Tisky. That's good. You know what I like about, I've realized what I like, I like a beer where it sounds like it could be a concentration camp you haven't heard of. You know what I mean?

Tisky. Tisky. Yeah, you liberated Tisky. It really fucked him up. Exactly. he was one of the guards half a Birkenau please

you know it you know craft business Alschwitz IPA please yeah Zuber yeah Zuber could be a terrible place

Zuber yeah he escaped from Zuba he was locked up 10 years in Zuba you know IPAs aren't doing that yeah

brew dog you know a dacal pail now you're talking now you're talking pint of Saxonhausen please anyway So John Knox is a, he starts, and this, like this just sums up, this just sums up Scottish culture.

He starts as a fucking bodyguard. He's a bodyguard to a Protestant preacher called George Wishart. And he holds a massive broadsort, right? And then Wishart gets arrested in 1545. And so, and then he gets assassinated, I think, he gets executed. And he's devastated. So Knox sort of goes on a bit of a rampage And then he gets captured by the French forces at St Andrews.

He then gets made a slave. White slave? He's a white slave. And he's Scottish. I mean, I'm trying to find slavery in my heritage. Right. Anyway, so John Knox is forced to row in French galleys for 19 months, but because he's fucking Calvinist, he loves it.

He loves that shit. He loves it. That's brilliant. You can't touch me. Yeah. What do you mean? What my punishment is to do more? work. Brilliant. Brilliant.

He then, when he's released, he flees to Geneva and he becomes Calvin's student, right? So it's while in exile in Geneva in 1558, that he writes, the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimen of women.

This book, he says women can't be rulers. Right. Because of the time, Scotland is ruled by Mary Queen of Scots. And Elizabeth the first is on the throne I think in 1558

yeah so for him it's upside down world the world's gone insane yes it is the world's gone mad this is fucked so he'll be see everyone is calling in what times are we living in this is mental LBC is impossible in the world without Knox

yeah okay so he writes a book saying women should not rule this is madness okay and then Elizabeth the first oh she takes the throne just shortly after that and then he goes well not no You're the exception because you're a bloke

really. You look like a bloke. So he then comes back to Scotland in 1559 having drunk from the teat of Calvin and Switzerland. And when he arrives in Scotland

is much like the rat landing in Venice to start the black death but instead it's... Don't call us that. Don't call us that. You're saying Presbyterianism is the black death. I'm saying if you view

boringness as a sort of of disease than in that sense. Or as a medicine. To your Catholic disease of opulence and light and paintings. Right, right, right. So, yeah, this is, this is what is it?

It's not laxatives. It's emodium. It's emodium. Yeah, Knox is a modium. Let's just cork that ass up. All right. John Knox is literally, yeah. Emodium arriving on a ship.

So Knox comes back to Scotland. The cork up Scotland. Yeah. And he's fired up by Calvinism. but he thinks... Because this is why Scottish people are the way they are. Remember the Scottish history is blue-faced, fucking Celtic,

Britons. As I said, I don't relate to any of the William Wallace. They're basically been the Taliban firing fucking naked. The Taliban. Yeah. I don't relate to it all. This is where I start to feel Scottish.

Right. Okay. Okay. It's a... And it's all from a French guy. Crazy. Crazy. French guy via Switzerland.

Anyway. So Knox comes back to Scotland and begins the Scottish Reformation. He starts. these massive tub-thumping ceremonies preaching in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh. Get a photo of that up, Charlie. St. Charles's Church, Edinburgh, which is where my parents got married. Wow. Wow.

That's how much is in my bones. My parents got married at Knox's Church, and he's there going like, this church needs to be way more boring. Right. Fuck it all off. He's saying, I want a plain room. He's literally, I just want. white walls.

I want to sit in the garage. Well, yeah, I guess it's, this kind of brown of Protestantism is it's a divorced dad, right? He's divorced from Catholicism.

Yeah. And you go to visit, you're not from a divorced family. But that moment you first visit your dad after the divorce, white walls, they haven't had,

they've had a woman in their life for like over a decade. Yes, yes. So they don't know what to do they're fucking eating eggs and that's it. Yeah. So this is what the churches have become. very much symbolic of the divorced dad's new apartment.

Charlie, can you find the photo? There's a photo of men who live on their own interior design. It's pretty funny. Yeah, this is what all churches look like. Yeah, this is a Lutheran church. This is a Presbyterian church. It's basically just a computer, a computer chair, and then like a rack of weights.

That's it. Look. That's it. This is, yeah, yeah. This is John Knox's church, right? This is my parents got married. It's a, windowless room with strip lighting, a computer chair, a desk, a bin, and that's it.

That's it. That's all you need. There's a God in that room. That's all you need. All you need. He starts preaching. And he also, Mary Queen of Scots, he starts having meetings with her. there's sort of a civil war and Scotland becomes officially Protestant

in August 1560 abolishes the mass and then also Elizabeth the first is trying she wants Scotland to be Protestant because then that would secure her northern border yeah Mary Queen of Scots basically fucks it

because I think she tries to kill Elizabeth and then Elizabeth has to kill her or something like that. This is before that because Knox visits Mary Queen of Scots who at this point is a fucking Spanish teenager. French, right? French teenager?

She's an annoying French teenager with blue hair or something. Yeah. And she's calling on hard man John Knox to like come and explain yourself. Yeah. He goes and meets her and says, you're fucking voodoo nonsense. Right. Don't fucking teach me.

I'm school of hard knocks, literally. Yeah. I think the last time they meet, he makes her cry. Yeah. I mean, this is the long road to your dad making waiters cry. Right. You know, let's debate me. Debate me.

Debate me. What do you actually think? What do you think? The marketplace of ideas. Okay? You're free to debate me. Dad, we're never going to go to this restaurant again. But otherwise, they'll never learn.

We had a terrific discussion. It was a brilliant dinner. Now, they've learned something. They won't do this again. It's actually very selfless for the next person has to be served by them. They've quit their job. So, yeah, oh, that's that story. So she returns to,

now Protestant Scotland having been in exile, Knox is like, right, well, you're a threat to the newly Protestant Scotland. So he's trying to demand her to abandon the Catholic Mass, and then he makes her cry after criticizing her relentlessly to her face. And she's a teenager. She's a teenage girl. Beast. And he's just fucking, he destroys her.

It's the first feminist gets destroyed by truth and logic. John Knox making Mary Queen of Scots cry. Right? It's like those uni hall debate things where they're debating, literally 19 year olds. Yeah. It'll be like a professional debate. It's like the Charlie Kirk thing.

It's like, yeah, you're debating the, like, the weakest members of that team. Yeah, of 18 year olds. Yeah. Who are barely neuronormative enough to fucking look you in the eye. Yeah, blue hair fat with a teddy. They're holding an anxiety. They take the headphones off. Yeah, Charlie.

So I was just wondering, have you read the Bible? Have you read the Bible? Yeah. So Knox basically, Knox, basically, Knox, Mary Queen of Scots for six and he found his legacy to the world is Presbyterianism

which basically is a radical democratic Protestantism which is anti-monicist Interesting So it comes up in the English Civil War Right? Yes So whereas Anglicanism

Which The Pope is the king basically In Anglicism Yeah Knox would say That in the Reformation The English Reformation which we will deal with more than when we do Heming the Eighth, that they just replace the Pope with the king.

He's like, let's get rid of, like no human should be in a hell of the church. It's going to be a council of elders, which is where the way Presbyterianism comes from. Right. From the Greek, right. So he actually is sort of the birth of American puritanism. Yes.

Very well, yeah. Because that's libertarianism. Yeah. Devolved. Yeah. Antimonochus is a... Fuck you, fuck you, mum.

Yeah, it is fuck you mum. Yeah, he's the first emo. Yeah, he's to fuck you mum. It's John Knox. Where are you? Yeah, he's listening to My Chemical Romance in his room, cutting himself, right? Whereas Anglicanism is much more gay.

It is much more gay. Because there is still beauty in Anglicanism. So this is the church that Henry VIII accidentally founds because he has a boner for a... Yeah, and this is the sort of the church that I was raised in a bit more. It's basically Elizabeth First centrist dad's the sectarian violence

that's going on. It was fucking super Protestant with Edward the 6th. It was super Catholic with Mary. There was too many factions so she just goes right down the middle and said let's just cherry pick a bit of Elizabeth.

It's a third way. Yeah. Elizabeth's the first player. Yeah. So and that means that we can still have some fucking, it's still a fucking church. We can have some beauty. It doesn't have to be the most miserable.

It doesn't have to look like a betting shot. It doesn't have to look like a ladbrooks. Yeah. But we can do without the. Pope without some of the bollocks. I'll tell you what it is. It's a guy whose girlfriends left him, but he's kept the house. Yeah. Right.

He's not moved to a new house and had to decorate it or not. Right, so you can still keep some of the furnishing. You keep the artwork, the plant. He can keep the plant alive. Okay, the stuff on the walls. The lighting is nice. Right, right. But she's not there. Yeah. Okay. In Presbyterianism, I'm

leaving you and I'm going to go and live in a fucking box room. Or is anglicanism? It's still a divorce. but your dad's divorcing your mum because he's secretly gay. He's a gay man. My dad is angry. Yeah. Because when you go over to your dad's house, it's like,

why is this look nicer than our house? Yeah. Why have you been, why has your interior design flair been set free now you've left? And you go, that's the Pope. No, it's not. It's your stepdad. And you go, but, but no.

But when did you have this? How are you suppressing all of this? I didn't know you're like, hi. Hi. Yeah, exactly. I actually think the spirit of Anglicism, which what I find so funny is it seems to be maybe

one of the most gentle churches. Yeah, it's like the English vicar is a fucking referee. Yeah. They're like everything's completely soft. Jam. Jam. It's just jam.

It can't really survive as a church because it doesn't have enough drama. Drama. It's not forcing anyone to be in there. It's not really oppressing anyone in any way. No. It's more like, well, you know, if you can be gay. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah.

If you want, I mean, if you want to be in Anglican, please. Cup of tea. It's that one. It's that one. And honestly, if you ever stop believing, you know, just go. It's fine, it's fine. Yeah. So it's just very like...

But it's also, Anglicanism is the... It's the religion of empire. The British Empire is Anglican. Yes. So it has that elite... What is it? Paternal. Paternalism.

Yeah, it's paternalistic. And also there is, you know, the aesthetic of empire. Rajcore, for example. It's still interested in architectural beauty. Yeah. in Sartorial elegance. Yes, sure. You know, John Knox would rather just be sort of fucking naked on a beach.

Well, we weren't. It's very similar at Mousuits. Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same thing. So there's still a, now, we've got the differences between Presbyterianism and Lutheran churches. So in Presbyterianism, if the Bible doesn't command it, you don't do it.

Whereas Lutheran, Anglican, if the Bible doesn't forbid it, you can do it. Just slightly gentler. So in terms of decor, Presbyterianism, white walls, no statues. Lutheran Anglican, stained glass, crucifixes, candles. So, yeah, so American Protestantism is closer to Presbyterian. Certainly evangelical is right, where it's all about the... Yeah. Music, in Lutheran and Anglican, you get choirs, organs, hymns, presbyterianism.

Originally... Acapella only. Barbershop, that's it. Not even a loud fucking pianos. No pianos. Piano's are gay. Fuck off. Right.

Go to the fucking West End and do Jersey boys. This is a fucking church. And why don't you suck off the audience while you're at it if you're playing a piano? Okay. Anglican hymns,

the most goated hymns of any church, I'd say. And did those feet? Well, there's a lot. Is it Anglican? Yeah. But in general,

I think, Catholics out of the water. They'd love that. What we've been blown out of the water. Yeah. I think the Christian relationship to music is probably the strongest of any religion.

Uh, oh, Oh. But, you know. It's a pretty strong relationship after that. They only got one song, though, don't they? They do. They do.

But it slaps. It slaps, you know? And again, what would the Christian call to prayer be? Well, which... Come in, there's tea. You know, it's not the same, is it? I've made sandwiches. Excuse me.

Yeah, they would be actually... A woman on a mineral going, excuse me? Are you allowed to park there? What's the call? Do you a permit for that? That's the goal to pray. That's the Anglican call to prayer.

Yeah. The busybody, the curtain twitcher. Yeah. Not quite as mystical as that, though, Akbar. Do you want to hear some Scientology him? Go on then. It's just too modern, isn't it? There's no sense of history here.

It sounds like the fucking monkeys or something. It's not bad. It's pretty good, actually. It's that Scientology? Gospel sounds... It's like psych rock. Yeah. That's an unbelievable.

Yeah. I doubt. that doubt that's true let's we'll circle back to that um but yes presbyterianism and get rid of the piano fuck off yeah right strip it all back so he successfully creates the scottish presbyterian system in march 60 1564 as approximately 50 years old he marries margaret stewart oh damn relative of mary queen of scots she's 17 oh um and she's crazy this is like a long-running thing now when a guy marriage is a teenager

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh so he's guilty of being a fucking ludan yeah listen you know it's it's it's listen to what it's sex tourism presbyterism is sex tourism right right yeah it's it's fine we're all in the gutter so is he managed to put himself

fuck by his bootstraps pretty well because he was a bodyguard. And now he's married into the... It's one of the biggest... It's one of the biggest zero to heroes ever. Yeah. He basically is intellectually. He was a slave. He was a slave. And then his fucking amazing grace. He was blind, but now I see. He was... He was

a slave on a slave ship. He was enslaved by the French. Darren unchanged. Hey? Darren unchanged. Darren unchanged. Darren unchanged. Yeah. And then he marries into the fucking

royal family. Yeah. You know, a relative of, and he makes the queen cry. I mean, he's savage. He's brilliant.

If only he was born after YouTube, so you could watch highlights of him destroying people. Oh, yeah, you know, 25 minutes, knock slaps.

You know, there's like hitch flaps. Yeah. Knocks. It'd be knocks out. Yeah, knocks out. Knocks out punch. Yeah,

be brilliant. And then his 17-year-old wife nurses him through his final illness. John Knox dies 1572 age 58 he's buried in St Giles again when my parents got married

and he lead now the great irony is that having having destroyed Mary Queen of Scots with fact and logic Mary Queen of Scots is it her son is James the 6th who becomes James the first

is that right or is it a grandson How does he done that? Sorry? Long story Charlie, we'll get to it So the irony of course course is that he basically having defeated her

and you know because Elizabeth imprisons her when she dies eventually her son takes the throne but he's raised by Protestant tutors

isn't he James the first yeah he's Protestant he is but then he makes the King James Bible which is the kind of

Protestant the Anglican is the English speaking Bible isn't it yeah that's the kind of text so

is that like the best selling Bible in the world right yeah I guess it is I guess it is the best selling. What's the worst selling Bible in the world? Don't know.

What's the least Christian country? The wicked Bible. It's due to a catastrophic typo in the 1631, which said thou shalt commit adultery. That's amazing. That's incredible. There's a Bible made under Charles I. That said, well, so people were reading that going,

oh, right, fuck. Brilliant. Oh, right. Brilliant. And also the fact that a catastrophic type back then it's not as easy to correct things

because once that's out that is catastrophic that is a fucking catastrophic oh no oh fuck unless they went thou shall commit

adultery turn the page nah yeah um there it is fuck there it is thou shalt commit adultery

that's pretty funny wow I wonder if they missed out all the knots so it's like thou shalt cover thy neighbour's ox he doesn't understand

what shalt me yeah so um Presbyterianism this becomes ultimately the central divide between England and Scotland culturally. Now Scotland

starts to really punch above its way intellectually because isn't there something about, there's a stat where it's like the more likely you were to have a printing press the more likely you were to be Protestant and then the more likely you were to be... Or if there was one in your town, the more likely you were to be Protestant

the more literate the society. So Scotland becomes a intensely literate society because Presbyterianism, even more than Luther, is about reading. Yes. You've got to read. And they're like, inventor per square mile is the best anywhere,

Scottish. Like, Scots invented everything, right? Yes. And there's barely any of them. And also within the British Empire, the people who... Toilets. Yeah, toilets.

Yeah. TVs. TVs? The electric grid. The phone? Yeah. I mean, our modern life is watching TV on a phone on the toilet. And that's Scotland.

Scotland gave a game of us that. They're the first hard. present for pooing. Yeah. So, Presbyterianism, then that's all about the, whereas Luther says you should read the Bible just so you can decide whether you agree with it or not, and it's your own faith.

Presbyterianism is like, you need to read the Bible because you're in charge of the church. It's up to you because there's no kings, because fuck them. It's up to you. You're running it. I see. So you've got to read it. You've got to be able to read, which is why everyone in Scotland's. And again, I mean, the are all council members.

Yes. You're all counsellors. We're all Jackie Weaver. Yeah. Whereas Anglicanism is a fudge. A fudge. It is fudge. Right.

It's a fudge between Catholic and Boston. And they serve fudge fingers as well. They serve fudge fingers. Yeah. Right. So. Eddie Isard's joke right? Cake or death.

Yes. That's what the Anglicans are like. Yes, it is. Yeah. But in terms of America, Calvinism, Calvinism's the root from the tree from which you know you'd say Calvin's the tree of life

for people who don't nap in that you've got one branch which leads to Scotland one branch that leads to Puritanism which leads to America because obviously the Puritans maybe 80 years later are disgusted with the direction of the country much like people moving to Dubai now

because ironically London's getting too Muslim where are you going Gulf, brilliant. You've nailed that, lads, well done. They are going to America to make it more puritum. Yes. That's all Calvinist. So the Calvinist work ethic, you know,

is American puritanism. Definitely. The Presbyterian iconoclasm of destroying idols and kings, that's America. How ugly a lot of American cities and buildings are. That's Knox. Yeah. You know. And yet, they're all fat.

Interesting. Which Calvin would have hated. Yeah. And Knoxwood have hated as well. Yes, it's true. So that's kind of the, I suppose that's, I guess that's the story of Calvin in a way, in that he's actually who we're all related to.

Because there's not much to talk about him as a person because he doesn't want any of that stuff being out there. He's been walking in the chair, in Trisselence. I mean, who cares? Who cares, really? Right. And he's French, which again is just mind-blowing to me. And yet he is responsible for the Anglosphere,

I'd say, the idea of the way, Yeah. Is impossible without Calvin, I don't think. The idea of capitalism is a Calvinist. I don't think the idea of the West, and the idea of the Anglosphere. Yeah. Because I guess the West is Spain, France, Italy.

The West is not Spain. What you're talking about? What do you think? There's Africa. I say the West has fallen. It doesn't mean Spain has fallen. It's never woken up. No one's saying Spain has fallen.

Yeah. What do you think about the religious character of like Australia then? how do you think that that that differs much from America from when you've gone there um it's a good point actually I suppose it's a mission it's more of a missionary society yeah and I guess I don't know much about what was cook he must have been Anglican yeah it's very Protestant vibes there I feel yeah yeah but it's yeah it's not the same it's not got not got the same hustle uh it's I think it's impossible to separate American religion from their

economic urgency. Yeah. Right. But they don't have that in Australia. Yeah. They see it as like a moral good to make money. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So that is the story of Calvin and of a friend of the pot, John Knox. In our final episode on in the Reformation, we will deal with the empire striking back. The counter reformation. The evil priests. Yes. The Darth Vader's. Yeah.

How do they respond? Spanish inquisement. all that stuff. The clap back. They clap back hard. That's the final episode in this series. That's already on the Patreon. We will hear about some terrible stories

of Protestants being massacred, which I am firmly against. Anyway, we'll also be doing a deep live on the history of the Amish. Yeah, that's on the Patreon. That's great stuff. That's great fun. And our live special

on the JFK assassination recorded at Hackney Empire last year. That's going out as well. Great show. That's it from us for this episode. you next time for the final episode in our Reformation series. Goodbye. Bye, bye. Are you breaking into podcasting and audio?

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