Michael W. Bruening is a professor of history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He specializes in the history of the Reformation in francophone Europe and is the author of A Reformation Sourcebook, Calvinism's First Battleground, and Epistolae Petri Vireti. During the 2020 worldwide shift to online instruction, his YouTube parody of "I Will Survive" went viral among educators.

"Michael W. Bruening's Refusing to Kiss the Slipper: Opposition to Calvinism in the Francophone Reformation is a superb piece of research and will be of interest to anyone studying the Reformation, French and French-speaking religious history, and a myriad of other areas of theology, polemic, and ecclesiology. It shines a marvelous light on a heretofore virtually untouched portion of the Reformation in francophone Europe." -- Jon Balserak, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"As a major piece of revisionist history, Refusing to Kiss the Slipper should shape Reformation studies for a long time to come. The sustained attention that the monograph pays to the work of these sixteenth-century "ne'er-do-wells" unearths extremely important material, filling out the picture of what happened in towns and cities from Lausanne, Metz, Neuchâtel, and the Suisse Romande. Those interested in the reforming work conducted throughout this region will have a new impetus to explore the work of figures who, up to this point, have been excluded from scholarly attention. But it is also the case that those who work on Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, Pierre Viret, François Hotman, Geneva, and the French Reformation will need to pay heed to a wider geographical and theological range of considerations as they pursue their research agendas." -- Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"great scholarship ... Bruening's work is essential reading for anyone seeking to better understand Calvin and Calvinism, the development of Reformed Protestantism, and its many forms in francophone Europe and beyond." -- Kyle J. Dieleman, Church History

"In summary, this is a welcome and necessary addition to French Reformation and Calvin studies ... We are in Bruening's debt for producing an offering that gives long - overdue attention to the broad opposition to Calvinist reform in the Francophone and corrects earlier historical works that present an oversimplified picture -- highly recommended." -- Thomas Haviland-Pabst, Themelios