H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies

05/29/2026

Dr. Amanda Eurich has been part of the Meeter Center family for many years, as a Faculty Research Fellowship recipient and always as someone who brings genuine warmth and support to our community of scholars.

Her scholarship has shaped how we understand early modern France: the Wars of Religion, religious violence and polemic, exile, and the making of Protestant identity. She is the author of The Economics of Power: The Private Finances of the House of Foix-Navarre-Albret during the Religious Wars, contributed the definitive essay "Polemic's Purpose" to John Calvin in Context, and has written extensively on the politics and culture of religious violence in early modern France. Her current project, A Life in Letters: Jean de Coras and the Wars of Religion, follows a sixteenth-century jurist through his remarkable correspondence, tracing Protestant insurgency and epistolary culture in an age of upheaval.

In recent years, Dr. Eurich has returned to the archives in Paris, working at the Archives Nationales and the Bibliothèque Mazarine, and presented at the International Congress on Calvin Research on serial exile and emotional trauma during the Wars of Religion. She has brought the same creativity to the classroom, including a role-playing game she designed for her course on the Age of Religious Wars, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes students remember a course for the rest of their lives.

We are deeply grateful for Amanda's scholarship, her generosity, and her friendship. She officially retired from Western Washington University in December 2024, but continues to pursue both scholarship and new ventures. In this new season, we hope she finds more time for her writing projects and for family and friends.

Please join us in thanking Amanda for her contributions to Reformation studies.

05/22/2026

It’s that time of the year again!

This is the season when we at the Meeter Center begin welcoming visiting fellows to the Center for their research. While scholars can and do visit throughout the year, many choose to come during the summer months.

Over the next several weeks, we will be introducing our summer visiting scholars one by one, sharing who they are and what they are researching.

Today, we are delighted to reintroduce Gideon Rossouw, a 2025 recipient of the Emo Van Halsema Fellowship for pastors in the Reformed tradition. Gideon spent time with us last year and will return to complete the remainder of his fellowship from June 8 to 19.

His research focuses on “The Heidelberg Catechism’s Theological Embrace of Consolatio.” Gideon currently serves as Assistant Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Norway in Stavanger and is a PhD student at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

Gideon will also give a presentation titled:

“Erasmus, Humanism, and the Heidelberg Catechism”
Thursday, June 18, at 2:30 PM
Meeter Center
Hekman Library, 4th floor

If you are in the area, we warmly invite you to join us. If you would like to join us online, please use the following link to sign up. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0A45ADAF23A4FC1-50369861-meeter

Please remember to click on the signup button at the bottom of the page.

05/15/2026

The Meeter Center is deeply grateful for the wonderful work of our student assistant, Eleanor Engel!

Since May 2025, Eleanor has been an invaluable part of our team. Kind, gifted, and always willing to help, she has contributed to the Meeter Center in so many ways: assisting with newsletters, welcoming and supporting visiting scholars, designing posters, moving rare books, and even playing a character in one of our special programs. We have appreciated her dedication, creativity, and cheerful presence so much.

Thank you, Eleanor, for all that you have done for the Meeter Center!

This summer, we are also delighted to introduce our new undergraduate student assistant and summer intern, Moon Liu. We are excited to welcome Moon to the Meeter Center and look forward to working with her in the months ahead!

05/08/2026

Call for Papers – International Calvin Congress 2027
July 27–31, 2027 | Jakarta, Indonesia

The 14th International Congress on Calvin Research will take place from July 27 to July 31, 2027, in Jakarta, Indonesia, hosted by the International Reformed Evangelical Seminary.

The congress theme is “Calvin, Church, and Society.”

We warmly invite scholars, graduate students, and interested participants to submit short paper proposals for the conference. The deadline for proposals is December 1, 2026.
Paper proposals should be sent to Arnold Huijgen at [email protected].

More information about the Call for Papers can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DL_ELAJpjtpXpH46fWrv0fn0mtyNpxNP/edit

Registration will open soon. Please stay tuned for more details.

For information about the congress, travel and housing, plenary speakers, and future registration, please visit:
https://internationalcongressoncalvinresearch.com/

Please help spread the word to colleagues, graduate students, and others interested in Calvin studies, Reformation studies, church history, theology, and the relationship between church and society.

* (Note: The program on Saturday [July 31] focuses on the evangelism ministry of Dr. Stephen Tong, founder of the International Reformed Evangelical Seminary. The program for that day includes a morning seminar on evangelism and an evening concert. Lunch is included for all participants.)

Calvin Congress 2023 – Tuesday, July 25 (9 AM) – Friday, July 28 (finishes with lunch)– On the campus of Calvin University andCalvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1) To find out more about the conference schedule and plenary speakers, click this link. 2) Conference registration:...

05/01/2026

On April 13, the Meeter Center had the pleasure of hosting David Urban, Professor of English at Calvin University, for a special lecture titled “Surprised by Orthodoxy: John Milton’s Trinitarian Son in Paradise Lost, Book 8.” Dr. Urban engaged critically with scholarship that reads Paradise Lost as presenting an A***n conception of God, offering instead a compelling argument that the divine presence encountered by Adam in Eden is the eternal Son of God. His case was carefully supported by a range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed theological sources.

The Meeter Center for Calvin Studies was filled to capacity, with fifty-seven attendees, including faculty, staff, emeriti, and students from both Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary, along with members of the wider community. The room was full of curiosity and engagement, an atmosphere reflected in the photos below.

We are pleased to share the recorded lecture here: https://youtu.be/Yij2oFcfe4w.

Stay tuned for announcements about upcoming Meeter Center lectures and seminars!

04/24/2026

In Memoriam Professor Sabine Hiebsch,

The Meeter Center offers its deep sympathy to the family, friends, and colleagues of Dr. Sabine Hiebsch, who passed away on April 14 in the Netherlands following a sudden medical event. Dr. Hiebsch was appointed as the first female professor at the Theological University of Kampen (now Utrecht) in 2017, serving as the Kooiman-Boendermaker Chair in Luther and the History Dutch Lutheranism. Known to many in North American Reformation studies through her faithful attendance and presentations at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, she was a perceptive historian with a passion for engagement with primary sources. Her key publications include Figura ecclesiae: Lea und Rachel in Martin Luthers Genesispredigten (LIT-Verlag, 2002); Martin Luther: Zijn Leven, Zijn Werk (Kok Boekencentrum, 2017) as well as numerous articles and edited volume contributions focused on the impact of Lutheranism in the Netherlands, women in the Reformation, and the role of women in the church today. We are praying for God's comfort for her family, friends, and colleagues.

04/17/2026

The Meeter Center for Calvin Studies was delighted to host Dr. Richard A. Muller, emeritus professor of historical theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, as our spring lecture presenter on April 2 in the Meeter Center. Many university and seminary faculty, staff, and students , as well as local community members, came to listen to his lecture, “‘Examine Yourselves’: A Revisionist Approach to the Practical Syllogism,” followed by an engaging Q&A.

In this lecture, Dr. Muller revisited longstanding debates over the syllogismus practicus, which has often been misunderstood as a works-based “calculus of salvation.” He argued instead that the practical syllogism functioned as a form of moral reasoning—closely tied to conscience, judgment, and the active life of faith—rather than as speculative theology or inward mysticism. The presentation provided a fresh perspective on Reformed piety, self-examination, and assurance within their historical context. We have been informed that this lecture will soon be published as a journal article, so please look out for it if you are interested.

04/10/2026

Most of the time, the atmosphere in the Meeter Center is quiet and studious...but not always! During Spring Break week, in light of our exhibit on John Calvin for the Young and Young at Heart, the Center opened its doors to local families to come enjoy a number of Reformation-related activities. The atmosphere was lively and excited - the children enjoyed hearing (and seeing) a reenactment of Luther and the 95 Theses, and a retelling of the 1602 Escalade, when the troops from the Duchy of Savoy tried to capture Geneva by night. They (and their accompanying parents) also joined with great gusto in trying out Reformation-era games, including sliding a key along the length of a table without having the key drop off the far end (apparently Calvin played this game, according to Emile Doumergue), and trying out an updated version of Elizabethan lawn bowling. Who knows? Maybe down the road one or more of these children will want to learn more about the Reformation and come do research in the Center. In the meantime, a very good time was had by all!

04/02/2026

The Meeter Center played an active role at the recent international Kuyper Conference, held on the campus of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary from March 26 to 28. Director Karin Maag invited the recipient of this year's Kuyper Prize, Professor George Harinck (Theological University of Utrecht) to lead a pre-conference seminar for ThM and PhD students. She also co-organized three panel sessions at the conference featuring presentations by Calvin seminary students and faculty. The Meeter Center provided a table display at the conference, highlighting items from our collection authored by Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, and engaging with participants about the Center, its work, and fellowship opportunities.

03/27/2026

The Meeter Center is delighted to report on a very successful gathering of the Calvin Studies Society in Birmingham, Alabama, from March 19 to 21. Our theme was Calvin and Creation, and we heard from a fascinating range of presenters, covering topics such as Calvin's eschatology, his understanding of divine accommodation in the context of human barbarity, and his role in human history (the last of these being a very big-picture presentation by Dr. Brad Gregory of Notre Dame). Other presenters considered the wider impact of Reformed practice, including how Dutch Reformed worship spaces were configured in early New York to demarcate racial divisions. The society extended a warm welcome to a number of student presenters, who appreciated the opportunity to give their papers in such an encouraging atmosphere. At the conference dinner, Jeff Fisher and Marty Klauber presented a festschrift to Scott Manetsch, honoring his deep and extensive contributions to Reformation studies. We are already looking forward to the next gathering, in spring 2028, when the society will once again be hosted by the Meeter Center in Grand Rapids.

Finally, one quick reminder: don't miss Dr. Richard Muller's upcoming lecture, "'Examine Yourselves': a Revisionist Approach to the 'Practical Syllogism'" - Thursday, April 2, at 4:30 PM in the Meeter Center, on the fourth floor of Hekman Library. If you wish to join by Zoom and you have not already signed up, please use this link to add your name to the list. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0A45ADAF23A4FC1-47273587-thomas