An accidental blog

"If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit." Abraham Kuyper Common Grace 1.1.

Monday 30 November 2015

Kuyperania November 2015


Simon P. Kennedy reviews Larson's Abraham Kuyper, Conservatism, and Church and State at Calvinist International blog.

He concludes:
However, the main problem I see with Larson’s project is the lack of “counter-evidence”. The “counter-evidence” is not so much counter to Larson’s claims. I am looking for counter-evidence to contemporary conservatism’s claims. New readers of Kuyper will quickly discern a number of policy positions in Kuyper, like pro-trade unionism and strong critcisms of lassez faire capitalism, which don’t readily fit the contemporary ‘conservative’ framework. Perhaps most alarmingly to the modern liberal-conservative mind, Kuyper was in favour of full household suffrage. That is, every head-of-household has a vote. This illustrates well that modern individualism would have been anathema to Kuyper. But modern individualism is a sacred cow to many on the conservative end of the political spectrum these days, and Kuyper serves as a strong and welcome challenge to this. I suppose that Larson would have needed to write a much longer book in order to provide a full-orbed ‘conservative’ picture of Kuyper. But in doing so, he could have provided, not only a solid defence of Kuyperian conservatism on religious liberty and limited government, but also could have provided a truly, “classical” conservative challenge to the rather tired and compromised conservatism we observe in contemporary western politics.

Joel R. Beeke. 2015. The Life and Vision of Abraham Kuyper. In  Common Confession: Essays in Honor of James M. Renihan edited by R.S. Baines, R.C. Barcellos and J.P. Butler. Reformed Baptist Academic Press.
This is a republishing of an article that appeared in 2004 Church & Society 14(1):24-31.

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