Glenn A. Moots ably defends Luther and Calvin from the charge of being radical revolutionaries, but too readily accepts their recent Catholic opponents' definition of "revolutionary"

Glenn A. Moots ably defends Luther and Calvin from the charge of being radical revolutionaries in "Was the Protestant Reformation a Radical Revolution?", but he could have done better by framing them as restorationists who returned the Christian religion to its rightful origins as revealed in Holy Scripture. That is most certainly how they saw themselves.

 

And this was not coincidentally how American Protestant revolutionaries also saw themselves:

 

Magisterial Protestants rejected the proliferation of radical sects and dissenters on both sides of the Atlantic and were, by liberal standards, quite severe with their opponents (e.g., Anabaptists or Quakers). According to Sidney Ahlstrom, three-quarters of eighteenth-century Americans were magisterial Protestants.

To revolt derives from revolve, to roll back or around. In Biblical terms this is the meaning of repentance, a turning away from present evil and going back to the original, right way.

This old meaning of "revolution" still dominated at the time of Alexander Hamilton and the American founders, and is inextricably bound up with the development of English Protestantism, which of course derived from Luther and Calvin.

What Is Conservatism? :

First, there were those who admired the English constitution that they had inherited and studied. Believing they had been deprived of their rights under the English constitution, their aim was to regain these rights. Identifying themselves with the tradition of Coke and Selden, they hoped to achieve a victory against royal absolutism comparable to what their English forefathers had achieved in the Petition of Right and Bill of Rights. To individuals of this type, the word revolution still had its older meaning, invoking something that “revolves” and would, through their efforts, return to its rightful place—in effect, a restoration. Alexander Hamilton was probably the best-known exponent of this kind of conservative politics, telling the assembled delegates to the constitutional convention of 1787, for example, that “I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced.” Or, as John Dickinson told the convention: “Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not reason that discovered the singular and admirable mechanism of the English constitution…. Accidents probably produced these discoveries, and experience has given a sanction to them.” And it is evident that they were quietly supported behind the scenes by other adherents of this view, among them the president of the convention, General George Washington. ...

Anyone comparing the Constitution that emerged with the earlier Articles of Confederation immediately recognizes that what took place at this convention was a reprise of the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Despite being adapted to the American context, the document that the convention produced proposed a restoration of the fundamental forms of the English constitution . . .. Even the American Bill of Rights of 1789 is modeled upon the Petition of Right and the English Bill of Rights, largely elaborating the same rights that had been described by Coke and Selden and their followers, and breathing not a word anywhere about universal reason or universal rights.