In many cases his interpretation of culture, politics, and geo-politics will leave the American reader confused. Profoundly conservative, his views on economics are not at all in line with the American Right - and certainly not its waxing Libertarian wing. He condemns laissez-faire policies and the utilitarian arguments that capitalism so often resorts to. He understands that 'money creates power' and warns against it - but then still spends the whole of his life chasing after power and relying on alliances with those who possess wealth. I find it remarkable that he clearly understood and accepted the notion that a Christian political order without a regenerate populace would necessarily result in an oppressive system. It's something American Evangelicals largely do not grasp and of course they don't want to hear it as it flies in the face of the narratives about freedom and liberty. Americans can still dream and fantasize in a way never afforded to the claustrophobic ordering of nations in Europe.
It will also surprise some readers to discover that he supported Germany in World War I, and was bitterly disappointed that Britain would side with a Slavic power such as Tsarist Russia - a force he viewed as menacing. By any contemporary estimation he would be considered a racist, but he was hardly alone. That said, his views are complicated and perhaps most importantly they are very inconsistent and often occasional.
He had no doubts about Dutch domination of the East Indies (today's Indonesia) and some of his children would be involved in these colonial endeavours. Like Kipling he advocated a kind of white man's burden, an imperative to civilize racially inferior colonial subjects. As such, the historical massacres involved were effectively glossed over much in the same way many of the British were quick in 1919 to defend the likes of Reginald Dyer and his bloody deeds at Amritsar. During Kuyper's tenure the Kuta Reh Massacre slaughtered over 500 villagers in Aceh. The fact that the Aceh War monument in Amsterdam still endures vandalism to this day testifies to the bitter memories associated with it.
As founder of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, Kuyper feared the secularism and liberalism of the French Revolution and its progeny, even though by the estimations of Dutch conservatives he was in fact a republican or liberal - that's certainly how the Dutch royal family saw him. They were not fans of Kuyper or his politics. These are also questions being wrestled with by today's Evangelicals - all the more as the liberal order seems to be collapsing.
He believed the Netherlands were a Christian nation and stamped by its influence and yet the reality was orthodox Dutch Calvinism was a minority. And so he wanted to create a system of principled or preferential pluralism - one that granted validity to the minorities in the country, and yet held Calvinism as a kind of privileged core. In that sense he would not qualify as a 'Christian Nationalist' in today's terms. He was a Dominionist to be sure and yet not a Theonomist or theocrat - positions he explicitly rejects. Intellectually he might resonate more with a Rushdoony or Schaeffer and yet in practice he was more akin to the kind of 'Christian society' approach seen in figures like James Dobson. And yet as a Dutchman, his context was different and so many things just don't match up. The analogies are broad and sloppy at best. Nevertheless it would be hard to deny that his influence is considerable when it comes to post-war American Evangelicalism. It would be hard to argue that figures like Billy Graham, Carl Henry, HJ Ockenga and Charles Fuller were influenced by Kuyper but as the crisis of the 1960's emerged, the movement sought a more robust intellectual foundation and Francis Schaeffer helped re-package Kuyper for the American Evangelical audience. The Kuyper-Schaeffer connection is critical to understanding the movement, and this is especially so when the movement was forced to double-down and reinforce its commitments in the 1990's. RJ Rushdoony also borrowed heavily from Kuyper and he too exerted considerable influence on many of the more thoroughgoing and extreme leaders of the Christian Right.
While Kuyper claimed to be Anti-Revolution (as in the French Revolution), Calvinism itself possessed a kind of revolutionary tradition - the long Dutch revolt from Habsburg Spain and both the Puritan Civil War and the House of Orange's role in overthrowing the Stuarts in the British Isles. Kuyper was a champion of Huguenot resistance to the French crown and was a proponent of the still invoked theological contrivance, the Calvinist doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate. He believed in the values of the middle class and public religion. The common people's liberties and the drive toward enterprise had (he argued) emerged from the Calvinist legacy - not the French Revolution. Even Bratt his biographer has to admit that Kuyper's historical interpretation is at times an exercise in romanticised wishful thinking. And it was this somewhat romantic view of Protestant revolution that shaped his understanding of the American Revolution and following Burke and others he sought to differentiate it from the events that took place just a few years later in France. For Kuyper, the American Revolution was justified and praiseworthy - and Calvinist inspired.
Like many Protestant contemporaries in the United States, Kuyper was worried about education. In America, the perceived threat of immigration drove the debate while in Holland it was secularist materialism. Kuyper wanted Christian schools - funded of course by tax revenues. He viewed patriotism as a positive by-product of applied Christianity and he supported a strong military and conscription as well as loyalty oaths. He viewed the Netherlands as a baptised nation and wanted laws to protect Sundays and to punish blasphemy. These views seem to range well beyond a mere preferential pluralism but again it is in vain that we look for consistency when it comes to the thought of Abraham Kuyper.
But because Calvinism was a minority he found it impossible to enact this political programme and so with Kuyper we find the concept of co-belligerence - a notion popularized in the 1970's and 80's with Francis Schaeffer in the American context. The 1994 ECT agreement (Evangelicals and Catholics Together) promoted by Charles Colson (who often evoked both Schaeffer and Kuyper) was merely the formalizing of this reality. And like the signers of ECT, to some within the Reformed camp at the time, Kuyper's rallying of Catholics and even inclusion of them in his government was viewed as scandalous and a betrayal of historic and confessional principles. ECT shocked many people during its time (including this author) but a better understanding of Kuyper (and Schaeffer) would have revealed that it was hardly an unexpected or exceptional development. Kuyper the former pastor relied on co-belligerence to win control of the Dutch Parliament in 1901 - a career path that is certainly an inspiration for contemporary Evangelicals and their political projects.
Musing on his influence within Evangelicalism I thought of how many have written about the doctrinal framework of Decisionism and how when combined with a particular understanding of Eternal Security, and a Cheap Grace understanding of Justification or even Salvation as a whole - the combination produces a disastrous result that has led millions down a path of false conversion, false profession, and outright self-deception.
Likewise, Kuyper's Hyper-Calvinist theology when combined with his low view of the Fall (demonstrated by his rather elevated understanding of Common Grace), along with his extended view of the Kingdom - has likewise led to catastrophe. In some cases, aspects of these two expansive and grievous errors have even been combined. We see this in some sectors of modern Evangelicalism. It has filled the Church with lost people frantically seeking to build a cross-topped Babel thinking they are serving Christ and building Zion.
His views on art and aesthetics were in keeping with what I would have expected - a strong advocacy for the vernacular and realism. The irony in this is that in some respects it's very similar to the kind of thinking expressed by socialist thinkers and their notions of what makes for good art. It should reinforce the values of the state and celebrate (and even sanctify) the common.
Kuyper criticises Greek ideals as being un-Christian and yet fails to understand just how much those ideas permeate later 'Christian' understandings of aesthetics. The good, the true, and the beautiful aren't the aesthetic standards of Paul (though some have tried to argue this on the basis of an eisegetical read of Philippians 4) but of ancient Greek philosophy. Paul is not talking about art but faith and perseverance. Kuyper insists that bad art praises sin. But could not some art that praises virtue nevertheless be 'bad' art? And what if historical realities when portrayed (even in realist form) tell a true (if tragic and ugly) story of fallen man and the state of the world? Depicting the results and consequences of sin need not glorify it. It might depend on who is looking. Under such strictures, all ambiguity is likely to be frowned upon. And yet for ideas to be identified and communicated there must be contrasts and even realism (if it's in fact real) must reflect nuance and subtlety.
And since when are human acts and emotions (let alone perceptions) simple and straightforward?
This is not the place for a full treatise on aesthetics but once one understands that art is for this age and expresses at best an evocation of transcendence interacting with this age, one can view it all a bit differently. If it cannot be redeemed and is doomed to burn with the other works of men, we can easily enough understand that these debates as interesting as they might be, are nevertheless in the end a waste of time. But for the Dominionist, all areas of life must be subjugated. There are no neutral or inconsequential questions - or realities and dilemmas that simply have no solution in this present evil age. And to confuse matters some Neo-Calvinists (the progeny of Kuyper) believe that cultural achievements do in fact survive the eschaton and as such we'll have art, music, literature, and other cultural trademarks in the age to come. You can take it with you in some sense it would seem. Some even extend this to things like engineering, banking, and the like. While the New Heavens and New Earth should not be understood as a kind of nirvana or an experience akin to floating on the clouds while strumming a harp - a more worldly or mundane conception is scarcely imaginable. It's just like this life but better - a notion that I find to be more redolent with pagan notions of Elysium than Zion.
Bratt provides some helpful commentary about Victorian thought in general, notions of progress and hierarchy along with the role of philosophy. There's a great deal of material about Modernism and the breakdown of Liberalism and how all of these forces shaped and interacted with European culture and politics. As already suggested, there's a great deal to reflect on and I found these sections to be rich and warranting a second reading.
American readers and in particular those attuned to Reformed issues will find the account of Kuyper's 1898 trip to the United States interesting. Again, the differences in the Anglo-American and Continental philosophical systems are on display as well as Kuyper's naivete about America - as well as his rather myopic understanding of history and current events. As he celebrates the farcical and imperialist Spanish-American War, he declares 'America is a blessing to the Earth'. He likewise praises America's middle class and while esteeming historical figures like Alexander Hamilton he also endorsed contemporaries like William Jennings Bryan and even Woodrow Wilson. At one point he lauds William McKinley and his expansionist war policies and compares them with those of William the Silent who also fought against Spain.
During this episode in particular Kuyper strikes this author as somewhat buffoonish, and even Bratt speaks of Kuyper's 'egregious misreading of Hamilton' and some of the other figures and events in American history. I found the notes on Dutch American Reformed culture and their response to Kuyper interesting. He resonated with the 19th century immigrants in the Upper Midwest and the groups that had split from the Dutch mainstream Church and had become the backbone of the Christian Reformed Church (or CRC). They would embrace his ideas about Common Grace while the older Colonial-era Dutch populations in the East (which would become the Reformed Church in America - RCA) did not. The 1857 split that led to the creation of the CRC was in fact related to the 1834 Secession back in the Netherlands. This group would later join with Kuyper's Doleantie in the 1890's.
With no small degree of apprehension, Kuyper watched Europe's Christian civilisation implode in 1914 and he spent his final years reflecting on culture, the emerging techno-industrial world as well as existential questions regarding man's dependency and the loss of self - as well as longstanding issues related to art and economics. He wrote about the differences between American and European brands of feminism and yet for all this angst was keen enough to collaborate with the likes of Andrew Carnegie on questions of social welfare.
The final pages of the book deal with his legacy, the fate of the GKN (the Dutch Reformed denomination he helped to found), and the Free University. More could have been said about his influence in the United States and in particular the CRC as well as the critique offered by leaders like Schilder and Hoeksema (who was not mentioned). Neo-Calvinism is often mentioned but not spelled out. Most of his children remained in the faith, though one of his sons turned to Theosophy. His descendants sheltered Dutch Jews in World War II and by way of contrast one of his grandsons was a member of the Waffen-SS and died on the Eastern Front.
Bratt deserves commendation. The main text runs at just over 380 pages and the book is loaded with information and ideas. It's the kind of book that one sets down frequently for a moment of meditation, and as stated, many sections warrant a re-reading - not for lack of clarity but for profundity.
So while Bratt is to be praised, Kuyper himself elicits a very different response. Throughout the course of the book I was repeatedly driven to think about American Evangelicalism and its ideological foundations, its acculturation, and its well-meant but ultimately fatal compromise. The story of Kuyper is related to how the Church is to live in the modern world. Evangelicalism sought to find a modus vivendi with post-war America in a way that sharply contrasted with the separatism of the the increasingly mocked and marginalised Fundamentalists. Evangelicalism struggled to find its identity and its ideology in the 1950's and 1960's. By the 1970's the solution was clear and the formula was thoroughly Kuyperian - which was then repackaged and reintroduced to Europe during that decade via the Lausanne Movement.
And yet a hundred years after Kuyper's death it can be safely said the Netherlands is not known for its godly society - but for its drug culture and its red-light districts. Otherwise it's known for its wealth and prosperity and some dark colonial history. The GKN or Doleantie, the Dutch Reformed Church started by Kuyper in 1892 (that merged with the earlier generation of Seceders) had by 2004 degenerated into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) an ecclesiastical body that advocates feminism and sodomite culture. In other words Kuyper's projects all collapsed with a generation or two. Like the Evangelicals he sought to change the world and instead open the floodgates and let the world overwhelm the Church.
In the frenetic tempo that characterizes American culture, the Evangelical movement started by Billy Graham and others in the late 1940's is less than a century later in a state of collapse and eighty years of culture war have produced about the same results. The movement thinks it has won some victories but these have been at the cost of losing its own soul and identity. And in the end, the net result is an overwhelming defeat. The culture has been lost (not that it was ever Christian to begin with) and the Evangelical Church has effectively destroyed itself in the process. It has made itself indistinguishable from the world. The remaining debates have little or nothing to do with Biblical fidelity but rather which faction of the world should the Church adhere to.
For many Abraham Kuyper is a hero, a stalwart, an intellectual giant and architect for the modern Church in a secular age. Rather I would argue he is one of the great villains, a sincere man full of zeal but lacking knowledge, a culture warrior fighting not against the enemies of Christ but ultimately for them. His life is a tale of tragedy, a heartbreaking call to pity. Instead of aiding the Church in its hour of struggle he taught a theology of compromise that resulted in ethical collapse and self-destruction. Whether he meant to or not, Bratt chronicles this sad tale. Readers unfamiliar with the course of 20th century Evangelicalism may not make the connections. Those who know the story will groan as they read, seeing in Kuyper the seeds that would bear a rotten harvest in the fields of American Evangelicalism. I do not doubt his sincerity but his tale is a familiar one - well meant intentions and yet ultimately a story of a deceived deceiver.
We have the benefit of hindsight. We struggle to imagine the late 19th century and the maelstrom of change taking place - the world was being turned on its head and everything was speeding up. Kuyper was hardly alone in his less than adequate and less than wise response. But he did not grow in wisdom over time and he did not learn the lessons of history - nor the errors and inadequacies of his tradition. He knew it needed to change but rather than wrestle with fundamental issues, problems, and flaws - it's as if he retained the worst aspects of the Magisterial Reformation's traditions and then added on what he perceived to be the positive elements of Enlightenment Liberalism. The result was epistemological chaos, doctrinal degeneration, and ethical compromise. That's his legacy and we see his errors being repeated and amplified before our eyes. Until Kuyper is denounced and his errors exposed, the Church will fall right back into these same patterns. They are soon to run their course in America but already we're seeing his pernicious influence at work in Latin America, Africa, and Asia and if it can be believed - once again in Europe. The dog returns to its vomit and with the Lausanne Movement and the growing force of Evangelical politics, Kuyperianism sits at the pinnacle of influence and is today all but equated with orthodoxy.