First, Jim Bratt raises questions about the triumphalism that traffics under the banner of all things Kuyper:
Kuyper himself favored military images. His newspapers were named The Standard and The Herald, and he often used metaphors of combat, titanic struggle, desperate battle. Of course, it was an age of heroic language, the era of muscular Christianity. Lead on Oh King Eternal (1887). Onward Christian Soldiers (1865). Dare to Be a Daniel (1873), which he quoted on the floor of Parliament! Two world wars and the whole bloody twentieth century have taught us to be wary of such language, though we must in fairness remember that Kuyper and his contemporaries lived prior to all that. The man was stunned and deeply shaken—not to mention financially bankrupted—by the outbreak of the first war, now exactly a hundred years ago.
The legacy of separate Christian institutions that grew out of Kuyper’s work in the Netherlands the Dutch labeled “pillarization”—each religio-ideological group inhabiting its own column of consociation, cradle-to-grave. At another place Kuyper imagined Dutch higher education as a collection of ideologically defined universities that were hermetically sealed off from each other, communicating not in person but only via a “post office.” But then again, he pictured the universe of knowledge as a tree, everyone sharing a common trunk and root system, but different schools of thought—including Christian—diverging ever farther apart from each other as branches the greater growth and maturity they attained.
Pillars. Armies. Islands. Branches. Not much hope of colloquy there. Not much of a truly engaged conversation with religio-ideological rivals, an ideal or expectation that we entertain—realistically?—today.
Then, Chris Lehmann questions whether contemporary appeals to Kuyper (like George Marsden’s latest) can withstand the errors of Francis Schaeffer (thanks to our Pennsylvania correspondent):
. . . Marsden doesn’t place Schaeffer at the demoralized rear-guard of a massive breakdown of intellectual discipline on the evangelical right. Indeed, one of Schaeffer’s unacknowledged oversights, Marsden suggests, was that he unwittingly shared in the very Enlightenment tradition that he was attempting to banish to the margins of the American spiritual consensus. “The strictly biblicist heritage fosters a rhetoric that sounds theocratic and culturally imperialist, and in which a Christian consensus would seem to allow little room for secularists or their rights,” Marsden writes. But these same figures remained in thrall to an Enlightenment legacy that privileges “the necessity of protecting freedoms, especially the personal and economic freedoms of the classically liberal tradition.” As a result, Marsden argues, when evangelical thinkers like Schaeffer talk “about returning to a ‘Christian’ America, they may sound as though they would return to the days of the early Puritans; yet, practically speaking, the ideal they are invoking is tempered by the American enlightenment and is reminiscent of the days of the informal Protestant establishment, when Christianity was respected, but most of the culture operated on more secular terms.”
Marsden is persuasive here—until he overreaches. It’s true that in annexing the American founding and most of its skeptical Enlightenment apostles to the broader sweep of a redeemed Christian history, Schaeffer and others like him at least paid lip service to the rationalist ideals of religious toleration—a tradition, moreover, that was deeply imprinted in the history of dissenting Protestant denominations such as Baptism. But there’s little suggestion, in the general brunt of the emerging religious right’s brief against the secular humanist enemy, that the ideals of toleration merit much more than lip service. . . .
The contradictory impulses on display in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment may well help explain why Marsden’s study finally alights on the author’s own plea for a sort of Protestant revival—by suggesting that American thinkers more closely examine, and appropriate to their own ends, the model of plural religious observance advanced by Abraham Kuyper. That’s right: Marsden is proposing that we move beyond the present impasse in the annals of evangelical controversy by returning to the Dutch theologian and statesman who inspired Cornelius Van Til to envision an evangelical order of pure and absolute presuppositionalist certainty.
Old Life 
DGH,
Thanks for bringing up the Marsden book. I was surprised in his final chapter that he had Kuyper do the heavy lifting for his “principled pluralism.” I don’t know Kuyper well enough to know if Kuyper’s thought carries the water Marsden wants, but it sounded a bit like some of your own approach in “Lost Soul.” How far am I off?
PGR
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Lehmann – Marsden is proposing that we move beyond the present impasse in the annals of evangelical controversy by returning to the Dutch theologian and statesman who inspired Cornelius Van Til to envision an evangelical order of pure and absolute presuppositionalist certainty.
Erik – I printed out Lehmann’s piece from “The Nation” and need to read it. For a left-wing publication, The Nation actually has some thoughtful pieces on religion. They had one on Roger Williams a few years ago that was really good.
Two initial questions:
How much was Van Til’s apologetic really influenced by Kupyer?
How much do evangelicals really know about Van Til or his apologetic?
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One thing that I think Kuyper brought to the table was a recognition that not every issue has to be a winner-take-all fight to the death and not everything is a zero-sum-game where Christians either have 100% or 0%. On his good days he was kind of live-and-let-live. On his bad days, though, when he was fixated on the antithesis, he would tell his followers that it was a sin not to vote for his political party. Kuyper is one of those guys you can play against himself at various points in his life, which Van Drunen illustrates in NL2K.
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Pat, where I think I differ on principle pluralism is the notion, seemingly implied in the Dutch neo-Calvinist experience and replicated in North America, is the need for Calvinists to replicate all of the institutions of civil society — labor unions, newspapers, schools, etc., — all for our own tribe. This does not appear to do justice to the polity of a particular place which may allow common institutions to provide services that are useful to Christians, Baptists (kidding), Buddhists, Jews, and Mormons. The spirituality of the church seems to me to be different by noting the distinct character of the church from all other institutions — voluntary, involuntary, revealed by general or special revelation.
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Is Kuyper’s work on the Holy Spirit worth a read? Pretty meager pickings outside of Owen’s weighty consideration.
And I’m not ready anything by Hinn on the subject…
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RC’s were pretty good at forming their own schools and papers too.
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I read that piece from “The Nation”.
What do you think of the author’s critique of Schaeffer?
What do you think of the linking of Schaeffer and Hal Lindsey (ouch)?
The thesis of the article seems weak. Kuyper preached religious tolerance but was an inspiration for Van Til, who preached the superiority of Christianity, which doesn’t sound very tolerant. Marsden looks to Kuyper as a model of religious tolerance, but that gets us back to intolerant Van Til again. Meanwhile the author does very little to link Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics to Kuyper. And even if the author does link them, an apologist can think they’re right and still be tolerant of those who disagree.
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“In intellectual terms, Schaeffer and Lindsey were hacks at best, charlatans at worst—but as Worthen notes, both men took great pains to stud their end-times preachments with learned references to classical history, modern philosophy and, of course, the inerrant word of God as preserved in Scripture. The net effect “made the reader feel smart, in the know, and personally involved in history’s climax.” Both authors had imbibed enough of the neo-evangelical gospel to preserve at least the facade of the engaged public intellectual. More successfully than any of their predecessors in the neo-evangelical world of theology and letters, Schaeffer and Lindsey institutionalized their own heightened sense of cultural and intellectual anxiety; but instead of pursuing the finer points of biblical doctrine or denominational orthodoxy, they made use of the far more capacious canvas of end-of-the-world alarmism to render their message in the broadest, brightest strokes of fulfilled prophecy.
Thus was the final irony of the neo-evangelical uprising brought to garish fruition: from a movement bound and determined to best its intellectual detractors at their own game, the evangelical right’s great twentieth-century quest for authority had devolved into a militantly oversimplified and slogan-driven gospel of end-times preparedness that required little more of believers than to scan the day’s headlines—and then bless the Lord’s grander design in reflexive fear and trembling.”
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D.G.,
What were your impressions of Schaeffer and how much time did you spend with him personally?
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Erik, the Worthen book that Lehman reviews is worth a read. Not so sure I will be buying the Marsden book, though.
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Dan,
What did you like about it and how did you hear about it?
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I agree that the Worthen book is good. Until the Culture Wars came along, evangelicalism never really had an overarching meta-narrative or consensus. The Culture Wars provided the consensus.
The Culture wars are now drawing to a close, which means that the evangelical consensus is unraveling too. This is probably a good thing, given that the Culture Wars never had much to do with the Gospel. But it signals a lot of reorienting and realigning.
I’ve been consistently attending a PCA church since moving to the Midwest for work. It’s hard for me to see how the PCA can hold together. The urban churches are theologically orthodox, but have sharp differences with the denomination on certain issues (e.g., whether same-sex couples can be members in good standing). I saw a bumper sticker on someone’s Prius at church that read: “Pro Life, Pro Gay”, which sums up the predominant sentiment in most urban PCA churches. At some point, the denomination will become too small to house both the urbanites and the “Aquila Report” crowd.
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Erik, the tension in Kuyper is antithesis vs. common grace. Antithesis seems to me the wild card. Since there is a fundamental divide between believers and unbelievers, you can invoke it at almost any time. And poof, there goes the common realm.
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Erik,
I took a walk with Schaeffer. That was the gist of the personal interaction. To me he was a celebrity, so it was hard to get a personal sense. Whatever he did was good.
Unfortunately, Worthen’s critique is closer to the truth than my young-adult man crush. But to FAS’s credit, he was talking about ideas and topics in the 1960s and 1970s that college kids wanted to hear about.
I got off board when he entered politics. I still remember him in person describing the 1976 election between Carter and Ford in terms antithetical. It didn’t make sense.
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Bobby, actually evangelicalism did have a narrative. Back when I worked at the ISAE, even during the Culture Wars, the narrative was Reformation, Puritans, Edwards and the First GA, the Second GA (which gets in the Arminians and holiness people), Fundamentalism, and Billy Graham and the neo-evs. Sure it didn’t make sense. But that was what bound ev’s together and gave them a common heritage.
The culture wars were a distraction.
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D.G. – the tension in Kuyper is antithesis vs. common grace.
Erik – And the irony is that the tension is not just among his followers, but was in the man himself! Rarely has a theologian said so many foundational things that are hard to reconcile. Van Drunen puts him in the 2K camp (somewhat uneasily), but he is also the father of the Neocalvinists.
Common grace may have fallen on hard times in the minds of many when the 60s hit. Witness this in “Christian Renewal” published by the “Abraham Kuyper Christian Citizen Foundation”. More antithesis than common grace in that publication.
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D.G. – I still remember him in person describing the 1976 election between Carter and Ford in terms antithetical.
Erik – Ford fell down more.
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Erik, I have known the Worthen book was forthcoming from various excerpts and interviews she has done. I got the Kindle edition when it first came out. Earlier, she had published various journalistic pieces, as I recall, in the NY Times Sunday magazine, so I kind of knew who she was.
One strength of the book is that it lacks the condescending, snarky anthropological field trip tone of so many studies of evangelicalism (including some of her own earlier journalism.)She uses many surprising sources; as an example, while not a real actor in the story, Yoder was a very prescient observer of what was going on, and she has mined the archives to bring out some of his thoughts about the neo-evangelical movement. I am intimately familiar with the wars in the SBC, and she is fairer to the victors than I could have been. She covers a lot of territory, some unfamiliar to me, and she at least seems to try to be fair- but maybe not entirely successfully with FAS. To me, the jury is still out on that, and probably will be in my mind since he was never anyone important to me nor was he of any real influence in the circles I move in.
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Ford pardoned the Dickster.
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Dan, but is Yoder an evangelical? Isn’t evangelicalism — again I repeat myself again — a construction?
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Dan,
Thanks. I might try to find some of her interviews online.
I would imagine the historical study of evangelicalism is only just beginning and will be something we can enjoy for the rest of our lives.
If Hart wants to make some bucks he might consider a large history of postwar evangelicalism picking up where “Defending the Faith” left off. He has the personality to pull it off in entertaining fashion.
The only problem might be that evangelicals are not big readers.
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“I’ve been consistently attending a PCA church since moving to the Midwest for work. It’s hard for me to see how the PCA can hold together. The urban churches are theologically orthodox, but have sharp differences with the denomination on certain issues (e.g., whether same-sex couples can be members in good standing). I saw a bumper sticker on someone’s Prius at church that read: “Pro Life, Pro Gay”, which sums up the predominant sentiment in most urban PCA churches. At some point, the denomination will become too small to house both the urbanites and the “Aquila Report” crowd.”
Wow! That’s news to me… has anyone else had this type of experience at a PCA?
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Speaking of the PCA and Aquila Report, the Anglican Curmudgeon has some interesting musings:
http://thechristiancurmudgeonmo.blogspot.com/
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DGH, no Yoder was clearly not an evangelical but he was a very interested and sometimes astute observer.
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Erik, how about a book on the Coens? Much more interesting. Maybe even more edifying.
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Dan, I agree. But I think Worthen lumps Yoder in with “evangelicalism.” She’s a lumper. I’m a splitter (don’t leave out the ‘l’).
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D.G.,
A Coen book would be cool. Think you could get any interviews? Talking to Frances would be especially interesting. You would have to do a revision as more films were made. Maybe you could get a jacket blurb from Greg.
You have written at least two books on evangelicalism, but I haven’t read them yet. That was my oversight.
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It would be interesting to consider how Judaism has (or has not) influenced their work. It’s definitely there ns “A Serious Man”. It would also be interesting to compare and contrast their films with those of Woody Allen and other Jewish/American filmmakers.
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DGH- “Dan, I agree. But I think Worthen lumps Yoder in with “evangelicalism.” She’s a lumper. I’m a splitter (don’t leave out the ‘l’).”
I didn’t get that at all. What I got was that he was around in the critical years, saw something going on that had more vitality than mainline Protestantism, but kept a friendly distance. My reading is that Worthen considers those who bought into worldviewism as her subjects, and i thought it was pretty clear that she didn’t mean to include Yoder in that subset. But that is my reading.
But, I think if I were in your profession and interested in the topic, though, I would make a note to myself to check the various Mennonite archives; they were clearly very interested in what was going on around them and not as isolated as I would have thought. That Worthen did think to look is to her credit.
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