The official conference languages were French, English, and German. Simultaneous translation of the plenary sessions have been offered.
Plenary sessions and special events include:
Forums (open to the public)
Opening Round Table (24th May 2009-18:00): "Politics and Power, Past and Present: What has been the role of the Calvinist tradition? What remains of it today?" With the participation of Martine Brunschwig-Graf, Swiss federal councillor, Georgina Dufoix, former French minister of Affaires Sociales et de la Solidarité Nationale, Armand Lombard, former mayor of Chênes-Bougeries, and Michel Rocard, Deputy of the European Parliament and former Prime Minister of France, under the presidence of a moderator, Roger de Weck, journalist and head of the board of trustees of the Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales et du Développement (IHEID).
Location: Auditorium Charles Rouiller, U300,, Uni-Dufour, rue du Conseil Général 20, 1205 Geneva
Closing Round Table (27th May 2009-18:15): "Calvin, Father of the Modern Economy? Myths and Realities". Michel Camdessus, Governor of the Banque de France, Charles Pictet, Member of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission, and Guillaume de Seynes, Deputy Managing Director of Hermès International, will discuss the economic influence of religion with an economic historian, Prof. Youssef Cassis, author of Les Capitales du capital under the presidence of a moderator, Eric Le Boucher, Editor-in-chief at the economic news monthly "Enjeux-Les Echos".
Location: CICG
Special Events:
- Reception at the Palais Eynard offered by the Conseil administratif of the city of Geneva (25th May 2009)
- Early music concert (25th May 2009) with the financial support of the Ville de Genève - Département de la culture. Concert (May 25 2009) The Orchestre de Chambre de Genève and the Choir Laudate Deum, directed by Luc Bagdhassarian, will perform Georg Friedrich Händel's Dixit Dominus and Jan Dismas Zelenka's Missa Dei Filii. This concert of baroque church music combines two of the outstanding composers of the first half of the eighteenth century whose biographies illustrate the interaction among different Christian traditions despite the confessional divisions of the era. Zelenka, a Catholic living in Lutheran Dresden, composed his work for the court of the Elector of Saxony; Händel was just 22 years old when he composed his in Rome for Catholic patrons even while asserting his Protestant faith through a reworking of psalm 109. The brilliance and virtuosity of both compositions have ensured them a success that has lasted down to the present. With the generous support of the Department of Culture of the City of Geneva.
- Banquet at the panoramic restaurant "L'Attique de l'OMM".
Special Invited Lectures:
- Max Engammare on "Calvin the Overachiever"
- Herman Selderhuis on "Survival of the Fittest ? A Brief History of the Reception of Calvin’sTheology"
- John W. de Gruchy on "Calvin, Apartheid, and Democratic Transformation in South Africa"
Plenary sessions
Calvin: the Theologian, Preacher, and Author- Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Calvin: Fifth Latin Doctor of the Church?"
- Olivier Millet, "Calvin the Author"
Calvin's Influence During His Lifetime In Urbe et Orbe
- Emidio Campi, "Calvin, His Swiss Theological Allies, and the Expansion of the Reformation"
- William Naphy, "Calvin' Church in Geneva: constructed or Gathered? Local or Foreign? French or Swiss?"
Calvin's Intellectual Influence in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Richard Muller, "The 'Calvinists' Respond to Calvin"
- Ernestine van der Wall, "Enlightened Religion on Calvin: Criticism in Context"
Was There a Distinctive Calvinist Political Tradition in Early Modern Europe?
- Harro Höpfl, "The aristocratic principle in the Calvinist tradition"
- Heinz Schilling, "Calvinism and the Rise of an International System around 1600"
Calvin's Theological Influence in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- André Encrevé, "Lost, then Found: Calvin and French Protestantism, 1830-1940"
- F.W. Graf, "The Plural Calvin. The Diversity of Modern Interpretations".
Calvin and Modern Calvinist Political Movements
- C. van der Kooi, "Calvin, Modern Calvinism and the Civil Society. The appropriation of a heritage, especially in the Low Countries"
- David Bebbington, "Calvin and British Evangelicalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries"
Plenary Speakers Biography
David Bebbington, Professor of History at the University of Stirling and past president of the Ecclesiastical History Society, has written widely about modern British religious history. His books include Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, Victorian Nonconformity, and William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain. He is now working on a study of global religious revivals in the Victorian period.
Emidio Campi, Director of the Institute for Swiss Reformation History at the University of Zurich, is a leading student of Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Zurich Reformation, and the wider dissemination of the Reformed tradition.
André Encrevé, emeritus Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Paris XII, is the author of numerous book on nineteenth- and twentieth-century France and French Protestantism, notably Les protestants en France de 1800 à nos jours (1986) and L'expérience et la foi: pensée et vie religieuse des huguenots au XIXe siècle (2001).
Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Professor of Theology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitåt, Munich, has written widely on Ernst Troeltsch, German theology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and the place of religion in modern culture.
Harro Höpfl, Reader in the Department of Accounting, Finance, and Management at the University of Essex, is the author of The Christian Polity of John Calvin (1982) and Jesuit Political Thought (2004).
Cornelis van der Kooi, Professor of Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam. His numerous books include studies of Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Karl Barth.
Ernestine van der Wall, Professor of Church History at the University of Leyden, is the author of studies of the Seventeenth century millenarianism and Christian-Jewish relations and is currently completing a major study of the encounter between Christianity and the Enlightenment in the Netherlands from 1760 to 1920.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford, is the author of important studies of Thomas Cranmer, the English Reformation, and latterly Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004).
Olivier Millet, Professor of French at the University of Paris XII, has edited many works of Calvin and written the pioneering Calvin et la dynamique de la parole : étude de rhétorique réformée (1992).
Richard Muller, Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids), is the author of a dozen studies of Reformed theology from Calvin to Arminius.
William Naphy, Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, is the author of Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (1994).
Heinz Schilling, Professor of Modern History at the Humboldt University of Berlin, is currently president of the Verein für Reformationsgeschichte. His many books about German and Dutch history from the late middle ages through the eighteenth century have shaped international debates about the consequences of the European Reformations.