Archives For Abraham Kuyper

Repaso: Market economy vs. market society; Easterly for president; Brooks on original sin; Latin America’s prison problem; interview with Kuyper translator

March 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

1. Market economy vs. market society
Brian Dijkema comments on Michael Sandel’s piece in The Atlantic, “What Isn’t for Sale?” — which has to do with “the hidden costs of a price-tag society.” Sandel makes good arguments, Dijkema says, but Gideon Strauss made the same arguments seven years ago:

There are many spheres of human life where economic considerations appropriately play a role but do not dictate decision-making. Families, schools and hospitals all have to balance their books—but they don’t exist to balance their books. In each of their cases, love, learning, and care, respectively, trumps the bottom line. One of the great challenges facing us is cultivating a society in which economic markets can flourish, but without overwhelming other spheres of human life.

2. Easterly for president?
The World Bank is looking for a new president, and among others, Jeffrey Sachs is working hard to position himself for the job. When I heard that, I immediately thought of Bill Easterly, Sachs’s arch-nemesis in the field of development economics. I waited for him to speak up. Well, Easterly wrote this passionate op-ed, showing pretty clearly how he’s not the man for this particular job:

I would not lead the World Bank by perpetuating the technocratic illusion that development is something “we” do to “them.” I would not ignore the rights of “them.” If the New York Times should happen to report on the front page that a World Bank-financed project torched the homes and crops of Ugandan farmers, I would not stonewall the investigation for the next 165 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes, and 20 seconds up to now. I am deeply moved by the universal agreement that my decades of experience in development do not qualify me for the job of World Bank president. I would not lead the World Bank by hiring myself.

3. David Brooks on original sin
It’s not every day a New York Times columnist refers to John Calvin, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis in the same column, but David Brooks does so here in an effort to make sense of the actions of Sgt. Robert Bales, who recently “snapped” and killed 16 Afghan civilians. Our worldview, he says, doesn’t adequately take sin into account:

Any of us would be shocked if someone we knew and admired killed children. But these days it’s especially hard to think through these situations because of the worldview that prevails in our culture. According to this view, most people are naturally good, because nature is good. The monstrosities of the world are caused by the few people (like Hitler or Idi Amin) who are fundamentally warped and evil. This worldview gives us an easy conscience, because we don’t have to contemplate the evil in ourselves. But when somebody who seems mostly good does something completely awful, we’re rendered mute or confused.

4. Latin America’s prison problem
Following the huge prison fire in Honduras last month, the New York Times takes a look at the broader problem of overcrowded prisons and substandard justice systems across Latin America. The story is here and there’s a photo essay accompanying it.

5. Interview with Kuyper translator
The Patheos Book Club has chosen Abraham Kuyper’s recently translated Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art (Christian’s Library Press) as its latest book. I read it earlier this year, and really appreciated it. They have an interesting interview with Nelson D. Kloosterman, the book’s translator. Here, he explains why he thinks translating Kuyper for English readers is important today:

First, educational: to overcome ignorance of a vibrant tradition of integrated Christianity that seems to be slipping into obscurity as another generation of Kuyper-knowers passes on. Second, evangelistic: so that the English-speaking world may benefit from ideas that have empowered believers for several generations in terms of public Christian cultural witness and service. Third, apologetic: so that both the advocacy and criticism of Kuyper’s proposals can be evaluated in terms of the very words of Kuyper himself, rather than in terms of any selective spin to which his ideas may up to this point have been subjected.

Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!

[Photo credit: photo-dictionary.com]

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Not one square inch!

February 6, 2012 — 1 Comment

Recently I’ve become acquainted with (and intrigued by) the thought and work of Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian who served as prime minister of the Netherlands a hundred years ago. I’d heard (and instantly loved) his most famous quote before I ever knew much about him:

There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out,  “This is mine! This belongs to me!”

Regrettably, I must confess that I haven’t yet read any actual books by Kuyper himself, though the recently released English translation of Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art (Christian’s Library Press) will soon remedy that. Thus far my introduction to Kuyper has come through a couple of books by Richard Mouw, recommended to me by Gideon Strauss. The first, which I wrote about in January, is a more general book on common grace theology, rooted in Kuyper’s thinking and published a decade ago.

The other is a new book called Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans). It really is both short and personal. The first half is an overview of Kuyper’s thought on a number of issues related to theology and culture, and the second half is a sort of appropriation of that thinking for the twenty-first century. Mouw focuses on the parts of Kuyper’s thinking that have meant the most to him and that, in his view, have the most relevance for today’s reader.

Among the ideas Kuyper is most well known for is what is called sphere sovereignty. In this way of thinking, culture is composed of a number of distinct spheres. A sphere, as Mouw defines it, is “an arena where interactions take place, and where some sort of authority is exercised.” So the family, church, state, business, art, and university are each spheres, and each “has its own place in God’s plan for the creation, and each is directly under the divine rule.”

That concept may at first seem abstract or irrelevant to some, but to me, it provides a cohesive way of viewing the world, a language for talking about it, and it hints at both the why and the how of Christian cultural engagement. In this view, God intends for the family to be a family, for the church to be the church, for a business to be a business, for the state to be the state, and so on. These different spheres have different purposes and limitations, and it’s important to recognize both. And it’s important to recognize that in the Christian view, Christ is Lord over them all. He’s not unconcerned about any sphere; no sphere is to be tossed aside.

This has huge implications for how Christians view faithfulness in terms of vocation and citizenship and church membership and family life and, well, faithfulness in every square inch of creation.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say I’m ready to label myself a Kuyperian just yet, but I’m wondering if maybe David Brooks was onto something in his column on Friday:

For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview.

If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You’ll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you’ll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition…

The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority, you probably shouldn’t think entirely for yourself. You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been developed over the centuries and that seems true.

What about you? Which influential thinkers or traditions have shaped how you see and live in the world? What does it look like to appropriate an old tradition for the twenty-first century?

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Politics, religion and the lost art of persuasion

September 20, 2011 — Leave a comment

I finished reading City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been sitting on it, mulling it over, ever since. It’s an important book, warranting a great deal of careful thought, and it’s also one of those rare books on US politics that actually does more to promote civil discourse in the public square than to erode it.

The book’s authors, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, are both conservatives — and political insiders at that. Gerson, as you may know, was a top aide and speechwriter for George W. Bush. He’s also a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, and a senior advisor at ONE. Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a DC think tank. He previously served in the Reagan and Bush (I and II) administrations.

The central question of the book is one both urgent and timeless:

What does it mean to be a Christian citizen in history’s most influential nation; in a world marked by growing interconnection, danger, and need; in a time of bitter domestic polarization and economic stress?

The first part of the answer is that there are more than two political options, odd as that may seem to us in twenty-first century America. As Gerson and Wehner write, Christians throughout history have formulated quite an array of differing — and, in some cases, diametrically opposed — political approaches that can’t be summed up by the overly limiting categories of right and left. Here are some of the main ones:

  • Constantinian: “wanted the church to govern earthly affairs, so as to bring society better into line with their understanding of God’s will.”
  • Augustinian: “the purpose of the state is to restrain evil and to advance justice.”
  • Anabaptist: “Christian allegiance should be to the kingdom of God alone.”
  • Lutheran: “two kingdoms, one carnal and the other spiritual, each needing to remain separate from the other and each making its own legitimate demands.”
  • Calvinist: “God [is] not only Lord and Creator but ‘a Governor and Preserver…’ The sovereignty of God, in other words, extends to all spheres, including all human institutions.”
  • Kuyperian: “three spheres — the Church, the State, and Society — each distinct but interrelated with the others, all part of the created order, all governed by God.”
  • Barthian: “the state… like the church, served Christ’s divine purposes beyond simply restraining evil.”
  • Niebuhrian: “believed in the necessity of politics in the struggle for social justice.”
  • Falwellian: “restoring America’s ‘moral sanity’ as an urgent Christian imperative.”

For that survey alone, the book is more than worthwhile. But that’s just the first chapter. Gerson and Wehner go on to outline, with conviction and grace, broad principles for Christian participation in politics. As conservatives, they take predictable stances on a variety of issues, but as Ron Sider writes in his endorsement on the book jacket, “one need not agree with all the assumptions or arguments to find this book a significant contribution to Christian reflection on where our nation should go.”

Politics, they write, presents us with an “unavoidable tension”: while a politicized faith has its dangers, “there is also moral abdication when faith ignores the opportunity for ‘genuine ethical action,’” a term borrowed from John Perkins. They point out the failures of the Religious Right, and urge us not to make the same mistakes — whether on the right or on the left. Rather, they urge discernment, faithful engagement, and above all, an emphasis on persuasion rather than attack. “If you would win a man to your cause,” said Abraham Lincoln, “first convince him that you are his sincere friend.”

In a polarized political climate that is anything but civil, in which demonizing and mudslinging are the norm, where cable news channels teach us that the way to discuss politics is to see who can yell the loudest, a book like this is a breath of fresh air. It’s practical, and true to both theology and history. Borrowing from Augustine, Gerson and Wehner conclude with both determination and hope: “The City of Man is our residence for now, and we care for its order and justice. The City of God is our home.”

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