Technical Notes and Acknowledgements

This book is intended primarily for native English readers but, unlike most Kuyper studies rendered in that language, draws off voluminous Dutch sources, primary and secondary. For ease of reading I decided to keep original Dutch terms and quotations to a minimum in the text. The Netherlands’ States-General I often refer to as (the Dutch) Parliament, composed of an Upper and a Lower House or Chamber, rather than the Eerste and Tweede Kamer. Kuyper’s Vrije Universiteit is rendered as the Free University; the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk as the national or Dutch Reformed Church. All translations from Dutch sources are my own, and all italics in quotations are in the original, unless otherwise indicated. Readers knowledgeable of Kuyper will note that I cite his 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton minimally. I do so because these Lectures on Calvinism are readily available to English readers and might be the only Kuyper text they have read, because the Lectures are digests of themes he treated at greater length and with greater nuance in other places, and because the Lectures themselves have been treated in detail in Peter Heslam’s Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism.

This project has taken many years to complete, and I have accumulated many obligations along the way. I was awarded a Fulbright research grant in 1985 for what I thought would be a short, stand-alone project involving Kuyper. I received another, as Roosevelt-Dow Distinguished Research Chair at the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, to close off the research process on this book in 2010. I am grateful to the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars and the Netherlands America Commission for Educational Exchange for their support in this regard; likewise to Dow Benelux, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Fulbright Scholar Program. Special thanks to Hans Krabbendam, Giles Scott-Smith, Kees van Minnen, and Leontien Joosse at the RSC for the encouragement and hospitality that made my time there as pleasant as it was productive.

Dick Kuiper of the Free University of Amsterdam was my academic host for that first Fulbright. Not only did he perform ably in that role, he provided exceptional hospitality for my family in our residence abroad and has ever since remained a faithful and discerning reader of my Kuyper work. As a resource for information and interpretation on Kuyper, his legacy, and the dynamics that surrounded him, Dick has proven an invaluable aid to whatever merit this book may have. Likewise, I have gleaned much benefit from the knowledge, wisdom, and friendship extended to me by Kees and Margriet van der Kooi, Jasper Vree, and George Harinck together with the excellent staff at the Historisch Documentatiecentrum at the Free University of Amsterdam. Professors van der Kooi, Harinck, and Vree all read significant portions of the manuscript with helpful comments and critique. If I have not adopted all of their suggestions, I was certainly stimulated by them to try to formulate my own conclusions with better warrant and clarity. The Rev. Tjitze Kuipers provided bibliographical help in the process of compiling his definitive record of Kuyper’s writings, and along the way extended me personal kindnesses as well — not least my first tour of Flevoland. Very early in my research Kuyper-master George Puchinger offered some sage advice: “First you’ll love the man, then you’ll detest him, finally you’ll understand him. Then you’re ready to write.” Truth, perhaps, for all biographers; I hope I have attained the third stage, encouraged by his counsel.

Over the course of this project I also received very generous aid from my home institution of Calvin College: two sabbatical leaves, a Calvin Research Fellowship, two stipends from the Calvin Alumni Association, as well as the grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship that supported the production of my earlier Kuyper book, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader. More than that, Calvin has provided the environment of splendid colleagues dedicated to the better part of Kuyper’s project, reappropriating the Christian tradition for fresh ventures into an unknown future. It is a rare privilege to have the concerns of one’s scholarly work enacted in their own way by so many able people on an everyday basis.

Particular assistance came from Richard Harms and Lugene Schemper at Hekman Library; from David Diephouse, Doug Howard, and Bert de Vries in their timely readings of several chapters; from the History Department’s collective critique of the Introduction (thanks to Will Katerberg for a terse title); and from my student assistants, Grace Hardy and Jake Zwart, in title-, translation-, and source-checking. It was my pleasure to assign Suzanne Bratt the task of compiling the index in the sure and certain knowledge that it was in much better hands than her father’s. My gratitude also goes to three friends at Eerdmans Publishing Company: David Bratt, who ably steered the manuscript through production; Jon Pott, who favored me with the wry humor which means, finally, that all is well; and Bill Eerdmans Jr., who extended me trust and patience beyond any reasonable measure. So did Mark Noll, editor of the series in which this title appears, to whom I offer these pages in explanation, and expiation, of my Dutch completeness hunger.

My Calvin colleague and treasured friend Bill Romanowski read the entire manuscript with the best writing advice this historian has ever received: think like a screenwriter. The reader will readily detect which chapters profited most from that counsel. George Marsden also read all the pages that follow, right off his own experience of writing a biography of Jonathan Edwards that deserved all the prizes it won. I have tried to follow many of his suggestions, and where I have not it is because Kuyper was not Edwards and so deserves some sterner measures. More importantly, as one of my first teachers and prime mentors in the field George endowed me with confidence that I could find my way as a historian. That that way was indeed shaped by him, and likewise by his partner in this endeavor, Ronald Wells, has been one of the great good fortunes of my life, and so it is a pleasure to dedicate this book to them as a token of my gratitude and of their legacy.

Brief Time-Line

1837 born October 29 in the manse at Maassluis (South Holland). Father is an ecumenical conservative in the national Reformed church. Family moves to Middelburg (capital of Zeeland), later to Leiden for young Bram’s educational advantage.

1858 finishes undergraduate studies

1860 wins medal in national scholarship competition

1861 suffers first nervous breakdown

1862 completes doctorate at Leiden, experiences earnest evangelical conversion.

1863 marries Johanna Schaay; installed as pastor in rural parish of Beesd (province of Gelderland, near Utrecht). Moves toward strict Calvinist orthodoxy. Publishes his first pamphlet, mixing theological and political concerns and aimed against reigning liberalism and stolid bureaucracy in church affairs.

1867 vaults to pulpit in Utrecht, capital of national “God & Country” conservatism. Soon alienates other leaders there by advocating a religiously pluralistic public school system.

1870 takes pulpit in Amsterdam. A radical conservative (or conservative radical), popular with orthodox working-class audience, and a skilled agitator in local ecclesiastical councils.

1872 assumes editorship of De Standaard, a daily newspaper (with its Sunday supplement, De Heraut) that would be his perennial pulpit and power base. By this means he shapes an audience and a cause, both of which would ever be identified with him as a person.

1874 resigns active ministry to take seat in Parliament; remains in the city-wide consistory of Amsterdam.

Through 1875 scandalizes Parliament with his rhetorical vehemence; attends Robert Pearsall Smith’s Holiness meetings in Brighton, England; proselytizes for same in the Netherlands.

1876-77 suffers second breakdown; long recuperation in Italy, Switzerland, and south of France; resigns parliamentary seat.

1877-80 reaffirms strict Calvinist (as opposed to evangelical-holiness) orthodoxy and crystallizes the three national networks that lastingly define the Neo-Calvinist movement: the Antirevolutionary Party (ARP), the Christian school association, and the Free University (VU) society.

1880 opens the VU with his famous “Sphere Sovereignty” address; professor there through 1901.

1883-86 agitates church reform question on the basis of confessional orthodoxy and anti-bureaucratic polity. This campaign culminates in the Doleantie: the splitting off of 10% of Hervormde Kerk membership. In 1892 these congregations merge with most of the churches descended from the Secession of 1834; together they form the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN).

1891 with educational and church questions settled and the ARP a force to be reckoned with, he revives his earlier concern with the “social question.” Gives famous address on “Christianity & the Social Question,” with democratic-radical tones. Encourages Patrimonium, a Christian labor union.

1893-95 split in the ARP over his socio-political radicalism. Conservatives form the Christian-Historical Union (CHU); Kuyper consolidates control over ARP. Suffers his third breakdown.

1893-99 his high tide as a scholar, symbolized by honorary degree from and Stone Lectures at Princeton on trip to USA (in 1898). Begins writing Common Grace, stressing ongoing divine sustenance of creation and social order, legitimating Christian participation with people of other convictions in public life.

1901-5 prime minister of the Netherlands.

1905-6 electoral defeat propels him on an extended trip around Mediterranean. Keen observations of the European periphery in Om de Oude Wererldzee.

1907-15 intra-party maneuvering leaves him frustrated. Writes Pro Rege, with renewed emphasis upon Christian cultural (as opposed to political) mission in conditions of advanced modernity.

1911-20 the much honored chief on the sidelines. Continues party chair and editorial functions; member of (semi-honorific) upper house of Parliament; harsh polemics vs. his successors in ARP. Takes German side in World War I; writes of the second coming of Christ and the hollow core of Western civilization; calls ARP to renewed commitment to the social question.

Dies, 8 November 1920