About the Book
What are the political and social implications of the gospel? In Our Program, Abraham Kuyper presents a Christian alternative to the secular politics of his day. At that time, the church and state were closely tied, with one usually controlling the other. But Kuyper's political framework showed how the church and state could engage with each other while remaining separate. His insights, though specific to his time and place, remain highly relevant to Christians involved in the political sphere today.
This new translation of Our Program, created in partnership with the Kuyper Translation Society and the Acton Institute, is part of a major series of new translations of Kuyper's most important writings. The Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology marks a historic moment in Kuyper studies, aimed at deepening and enriching the church's development of public theology.
About the Author :
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a leading Dutch figure in education, politics, and theology. He was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, was appointed to Parliament, and served as prime minister. Kuyper also founded the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, a political party, and a denomination, in addition to writing on a dizzying array of subjects. Harry Van Dyke was born in Rotterdam, Holland, and at the age of twelve moved with his parents and six siblings to Canada. He earned a BA at Calvin College and a DLitt at the VU University Amsterdam. He has published a score of articles, numerous translations, and a book, Groen van Prinsterer's Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution (1989), besides editing anthologies of the writings of S. U. Zuidema and M. C. Smit.
For twelve years he served as research fellow and instructor in theory and philosophy of history at the VU University Amsterdam, then taught history at Redeemer University College for twenty-three years. Since his retirement he has given direction to the Dooyeweerd Centre for Christian Philosophy and has been involved in several translation projects. He and his wife have two adult daughters and two grandchildren. They reside in Hamilton, Ontario, where they are members of a local Christian Reformed church.
Review :
Abraham Kuyper ranks as one of the most important Christian intellectuals of the modern era, not least because he represents an unusual blend of theological orthodoxy and cultural progressiveness. His writings cover not only the church but spheres such as politics, education, scholarship, journalism, and the arts. He was also actively involved in these spheres, sparking developments that have long outlasted him. His influence continues to grow worldwide as more of his works are translated from Dutch. An English translation of Kuyper's political manifesto Our Program is long overdue and will be welcomed by scholars and practitioners alike. It unlocks some of the key ideas of Kuyper's creative genius.
--PETER S. HESLAM, Director, Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative, University of Oxford, Senior Member, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Even though modernity has discredited itself morally, despite its merciful insights by common grace, Kuyper outlines a biblically Christian alternative, or at least the beginning of one, for those who are searching down various postmodern trails and finding only greater despair and false promises. In this 1879 manifesto, Abraham Kuyper offers a biblically Christian understanding of political life that attempts to remedy what is still our crisis: the failure of modernity to satisfy the human spirit and its propensity to establish monstrous tyranny. If modernity, despite by common grace its merciful insights, has discredited itself morally, Kuyper outlines a biblically Christian alternative, or at least the beginning of one, for those who are searching down various postmodern trails and finding only greater despair and false promises. We can be grateful to Harry Van Dyke for making this translation of Our Program available to our generation.
--D. C. INNES, Associate Professor of Politics, The King's College
It is a scandal and a disgrace that we have all read Burke's response to the French Revolution, but few in the English-speaking world have read the equally profound and equally consequential response of Abraham Kuyper--a response that has at least as much to say to twenty-first-century readers as Burke's. It has been truly said that America never produced a really great political philosopher and has had to borrow them from Europe; Kuyper deserves a place beside Locke and Tocqueville as a titanic European intellect whose thought can help us understand the American experiment in religious liberty and constitutional democracy. In this book Kuyper lays out the intellectual architecture of what we now call 'sphere sovereignty, ' staking out a democratic and republican alternative both to aristocratic traditionalism and to the implicitly totalitarian logic of secularism. Kuyper's rare talent for simultaneously giving due weight to the claims of both revelation and human culture uniquely equips him to explore the central paradoxes of modern politics: that religious freedom can be justified only on the assumption that we are responsible to God and that the state can rightfully rule over its subjects as individuals only if it acknowledges that it is in turn ruled by them in their social capacity as an organic community and culture. Kuyper's application of his political theology and philosophy to the particular situation of his own country in his own time illustrates how these paradoxes play themselves out in practice in ways that cast an invaluable light upon the problems of our own time and place.
--GREG FORSTER, Director, Oikonomia Network; Visiting Assistant Professor of Faith and Culture, Trinity International University
This early work of Abraham Kuyper was the intellectual basis for the first Christian political party in modern democracy and presented a new, modern way of doing politics. Our Program illustrates how Kuyper turned politics from an elite business into a public affair, how he changed the public involvement in politics from a single issue activity into permanent action, and how he challenged liberal politics based on reason and consensus by introducing a debating culture in parliament based on conflicting worldviews. It is amazing how relevant this monument in political history still is. Read it and you will be encouraged to make your voice heard!
--GEORGE HARINCK, Professor of History and Archivist, VU University Amsterdam
Though Our Program is a work of its time rather than a work of enduring theological significance, this translation is to be warmly welcomed because of the new insight it gives English readers into the extraordinary mind and times of Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper's 'antirevolutionary' vision, worked out here at length, provides an illuminating historical lens through which to see contemporary debates between Christianity and secularism.
--GORDON GRAHAM, Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts, Princeton Theological Seminary
