The government structure of the United States of America owes much more to the Reformation than most realize. Writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, Harvard Professor George Bancroft ranked John Calvin among “the foremost of modern republican legislators; who was responsible for elevating the culture of Geneva into the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” Bancroft elsewhere writes, “He that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.”

The Reformation introduced the following principles of polity that later influenced the formation of American government:

• The Reformed view of the nature of man gave specific ground for a fixed limit on human government
• It prevented consolidation of all governmental power into a single council
• It anticipated many later instances of political federalism
• In its limit of government, it imposed limitations on terms, introduced checks and balances, and separation of powers (predated any other system of government by two centuries)
• It offered election by residents
• It promoted a federal structure of government
• It established an appellate system
• It insisted that the government serve the public good
• It opposed service in office for the pursuit of personal benefit
• It taught and stimulated personal responsibility and responsible citizenship
• It helped elected governors perceive themselves as having a duty to God
• It established freedom of speech
• The Reformation transformed civil government ultimately by insisting that accountability to God was at the heart of good polity