Our Program

A Christian Political Manifesto

Abraham Kuyper, Harry Van Dyke, Harry Van Dyke

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781577996828
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

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.

CHAPTER ONE

OUR MOVEMENT1

The antirevolutionary or Christian-historical movement represents, insofar as it pertains to our country, the keynote of our national character as this received its stamp around 1572 under the leadership of Orange and the influence of the Reformation, and wishes to develop this in accordance with the altered circumstances of our nation in a form that satisfies the needs of our time.2

ARTICLE 1

I. OUR NAME

§ 5 ANTIREVOLUTIONARY3

Our movement has two names: either antirevolutionary or Christian-historical, depending on whether you focus on what we oppose or on what we wish to promote.

Our movement’s first name, given its origin, is “antirevolutionary.” It took its rise from opposing something offensive, something that clashed with what is just and sacred.

We are therefore at heart a militant party, unhappy with the status quo and ready to critique it, fight it, and change it.

What we oppose is “the Revolution,” by which we mean the political and social system embodied in the French Revolution. Contrary to what is imputed to us, we do not oppose each and every popular uprising. We recognize that national leaders are sometimes called upon to put an end to destructive tyrannies, and so we honor, for example, the Dutch Revolt against Spain, the Glorious Revolution under William III, the American war of independence from Britain, and our overthrow of the Napoleonic regime in 1813.

Those events, after all, do not represent destruction but restoration, not the overthrow of a nation’s laws but their reaffirmation, and thus not a forsaking of God but a return to him.

What we combat, on principle and without compromise, is the attempt to totally change how a person thinks and how he lives, to change his head and his heart, his home and his country—to create a state of affairs the very opposite of what has always been believed, cherished, and confessed, and so to lead us to a complete emancipation from the sovereign claims of Almighty God.

The French Revolution was the first and most brazen attempt of this kind. Thus, like Edmund Burke, we do not hesitate to focus our attack on this monstrous Revolution. To forestall any misunderstanding, I ask only of my readers, be they adherents or opponents, to bear in mind that the enduring power of an idea is different from its fleeting expression in that one event.

As an idea, the Revolution turns everything topsy-turvy, such that what was at the bottom rises to the top and what was at the very top now moves to the bottom. In this way it severs the ties that bind us to God and his Word, in order to subject both to human criticism. Once you undermine the family by replacing it with self-chosen (often sinful) relationships, once you embrace a whole new set of ideas, rearrange your notions of morality, allow your heart to follow a new direction—once you do this the Encyclopedists will be followed by the Jacobins, the theory by the practice, because “the new humanity” requires a new world. What the philosophers, whose guilt is greater, did to your minds and hearts with pen and compass and scalpel (and would like even more boldly to do to your children) will be carried out by the heroes of the barricades with dagger, torch, and crowbar.

§ 6 CHRISTIAN-HISTORICAL

But it is not enough to know what you are against. To wage war with prospects of victory, our people needed to become aware of the sacred stronghold for the sake of which we entered the fray. To indicate that, we called ourselves Christian-historical. The ideology of the Revolution, after all, is anti-Christian in its starting point and therefore much worse than the worldview of paganism.

That is why the Christian banner had to be lifted high again. Not only did it announce an Evangelical program, but it also affirmed specifically that the battered condition in which the eighteenth century had handed Europe over to the age that followed, was not the fault of Christian principles having failed us but of our failure to live up to those principles.

We condemn outright the abuses that were customary in 1789, though there was exaggeration in the way revolutionaries depicted them. We fully agree that things could not go on that way. And even in the unholy and shameful upheaval that brought all the dregs of human passions to the surface, we revere God’s guiding hand in delivering Europe from those abuses.

But when revolutionaries now tell us: “Everything used to be Christian, so your religion was responsible for those abuses, and abandoning the Christian religion and switching to our humanist beliefs is the only permanent remedy”—then everything in us protests against such calumny. On the contrary, after comparing the historical record with the demands of the gospel, we contend that this godless tyranny, this level of infamy to which men had sunk, this whole situation so unworthy of humanity, would never have come about if the nations of Europe had not time and again put the candle of the gospel under a bushel.

We contend that to stray onto the slippery paths of the philosophy of humanity will not stop the flood of iniquity. Instead, that would make it wash over us even more frightfully and before long confront us with such calamities that the blood-red luster of 1789 and 1793 will pale by comparison.

We contend, after consulting our beliefs, examining our personal lives, and listening to the past, that there is no other cure to be found for Europe’s malady than under the auspices of the Man of Sorrows.

If “Christian” therefore stands opposite “humanity,” the addition “historical” indicates that our situation cannot be created by us at will. It is the product of a past that, independent of our will and apart from our input, is fashioned by him in whom we live and move and have our being.

Whoever respects the rights of history places himself under a law and acknowledges that his will is bound by the will of former generations and is tied to the interests of the generations to come. In short, with the hallmark of history on our labors, the crown that we took for ourselves is laid down again and, alongside our forefathers and surrounded by our present adherents, we go on our knees in order to give glory, not to the creature, who is nothing, but to him whose holy footsteps you hear rustling through the pages of history.

§ 7 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO

From this short exposition it is clear that “antirevolutionary” and “Christian-historical” are words of almost identical meaning. It betrays a lack of familiarity with the meaning of these terms when people give out that they are willing to be called “Christian-historical” but not “antirevolutionary.”

Granted, there is more durable content in a label that states positively what you are for, than in a term that merely indicates what you are against. Also, the terms Christian4 and historical sound more familiar and positive and speak more to your inner life than the cold foreign term antirevolutionary. In addition, the label “Christian-historical” would remain relevant even if the Revolution were vanquished and the term “antirevolutionary” had outlived itself.

The reason why we often prefer the name “antirevolutionary,” as one can readily see, is that it is more energetic and more compelling. When someone tells you, “I am an antirevolutionary” you know at once where you are at with him, whereas “Christian-historical” still leaves you wondering.

Let’s make no secret of it: it takes more courage to be an antirevolutionary.

Oh yes, our day and age will let you have your label “Christian-historical,” provided nothing further is specified about it. You can be Christian-historical without any consequences to speak of. With nothing but that title you will even be admitted to the circle of full-blooded radicals as a person open to change.

But when you declare yourself an antirevolutionary—that is, when you consciously and stoutly oppose the prevailing ideas and trends in legal thought; when you carry forward your Christian and historical convictions onto the political and social domains and consider it an honor to belong to that group in society that is targeted for oppression if not destruction—then your opposition provokes resistance and you are in for a political fight to the death.

II. THE KEYNOTE OF OUR NATIONAL CHARACTER

§ 8 THREE BASIC TYPES OF NATIONALITY

Three national types vie for dominance in the bosom of our nation: the Roman Catholic type, whose image and ideal lie in the Middle Ages; the Revolutionary type, whose ideal and type are found in the model states of the French or German doctrinaires;5 and in between these two the Puritan type, which is represented by our movement and whose flowering coincides with the glory days of the Dutch Republic.

Each of these three types have always displayed the same national character, but each time with a different keynote, depending on the principle animating it and the aims pursued by it.

The old Netherlandic people stayed the same; the nation was never uprooted. Yet in the sixteenth century and again toward the end of the eighteenth century, this people underwent a remarkable transformation and renewal in its character and qualities, a change that, depending on your sympathies, you will either praise as having rejuvenated and ennobled the nation or else denounce as having perverted and degenerated it.

The weakest type to develop was the Catholic one. During the years that Rome flourished, any political and cultural unity in the Low Countries burgeoned only briefly and proved incapable of inspiring a comprehensive national sense through a single national will.6

Of greater influence was the liberal keynote that was imposed upon our national character after the revolution of 1795, when national unity was consolidated as never before and the systematic breakup of our liberties and privileges began in earnest, following foreign examples. It had greater influence in part because already during the Dutch Republic a powerful group had wanted to enter upon a course that could now be taken unhindered under French auspices. The influence was greater above all since Roman Catholics, in a natural reaction to the anti-Catholic nature of our former republic, initially aided the revolutionaries.

But the type to develop most richly, to blossom most abundantly, to ripen to nationality most fully, was the Puritan Christian type that our people took on during the Republic. The Catholic type had been impressed only briefly on the newly formed nation. The Revolutionary type has been operative for only eighty years. The Puritan type, by contrast, has had two full centuries to unfold its splendor.

The age in which that keynote came to dominate was the heroic age of our nation, or if you will, that mysterious moment when all the hidden treasures of our nationality suddenly burst to life and everything seemed to have become great, causing the nation to outdo itself, even as mutual trust and confidence redoubled the effect of the nation’s strength.

It is a matter of record that at that time the Netherlands was at its peak, was most itself in every field and every domain of human endeavor, of learning, and of life. All Europe acknowledges that we were then the most refined and the most richly organized region of the whole continent.

And the memory of that former greatness is still so overpowering that our “revolutionaries,” rather embarrassed by the traditions of their own forefathers (the terrorists of the French Revolution), preferably parade in garb stolen from the wardrobe of our history and act as if a Marnix of old and a Kappeyne of today resemble each other like two drops of water.7

§ 9 REVIVAL OF THE REFORMED TYPE

T...