Abraham Kuyper's Attack on Liberalism

by Dirk Jellema

^BRAHAM KUYPER (1837-1920), a self-styled "Christian

Democrat" who dominated two generations of Dutch politi-
cal history, has received passing mention rather than
scholarly examination outside the Netherlands. Ernst Troeltsch,
speaking of Kuyper's theological work, called him a key figure in
the development of modern Calvinistic thought. And Michael
Fogarty mentions Kuyper's influence in building "one of the most
successful, and in many ways the most instructive political, eco-
nomic and social movements to be found anywhere in the Christian
world." But, apart from such brief notes, there is little.1 We
propose in this article to sketch Kuyper's career and summarize
the ideas with which he attacked Liberalism.
Kuyper's childhood was spent in Middelburg, the port city of
Zeeland. He loved the sea, and until his teens he was sure he
wanted to be a ship's captain. His father, Jan Frederick Kuyper,
was a Reformed minister, who held to a somewhat vague evangeli-
calism and stressed a simple piety; his mother, Henriette Huber,
was the daughter of a former officer in the Swiss Gardecorps.
Young "Bram" was increasingly attracted by theology, and at
seventeen he enrolled in the University of Ley den.
1
Ernst Troeltsch, Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (New York,
1949), pp. 655, 660, 676, and Michael Fogarty, Christian Democracy in West-
ern Europe, 1820-1953 (Notre Dame, 1957), pp. xv, 301-2, et al. In English,
see J. VanderKroef, "Abraham Kuyper and the Rise of Neo-Calvinism in the
Netherlands," Church History, XVII (1948), 316-334, stressing Kuyper and
the "Calvinist Renaissance" of the late nineteenth century Netherlands. There
are brief accounts in B. Landheer (ed.), The Netherlands (Berkeley, 1944),
and in the more popular A. Barnouw, Holland Under Queen Wilhelmina
(New York, 1923). The best biography in Dutch is that of P. Kasteel, Abra-
ham Kuyper (Louvain, 1938); see also P. A. Diepenhorst, Dr. A. Kuyper
(Haarlem, 1931); J. C. Rullrnan, Abraham Kuyper (Kampen, 1928); W. F. A.
Winckel, Leven en arbeid van Dr. A. Kuyper (Amsterdam, 1919). A listing
and summary of Kuyper's formidable output of writings is given by J. C.
Rullman, Kuyper-bibliografie (3 vols., Kampen, 1929-1940). Two of Kuyper's
works dealing with political and social issues have been translated: Het Cal-
vinisme (1898) as Calvinism (Grand Rapids, 1943) and Het sociale vraagstuk
en de Christelijke religie (1891) as Christianity and the Class Struggle (Grand
Rapids, 1950).
472
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 473

Leyden was the center for "modern theology" in the Nether-

lands. Young Kuyper soon threw overboard the evangelicalism
in which he had grown up, and became a religious liberal. He
was a brilliant student, and when he graduated with honors in
1862 he was looked on as one of the most promising of the young
liberal ministers in the Reformed church (Hervormde Kerk). He
married his college sweetheart, Jo Schaay (1841-1899), and, at
twenty-six, became the pastor of a small church in Beesd, in a
rural and backward section of the Netherlands.
At Beesd (1863-1867), the young pastor went through a
spiritual crisis. He was deeply moved by the combination of
theological assurance and ardent faith displayed by the simple
peasants to whom he preached. If a second-hand and fossilized
version of Calvinism could do so much for unlettered peasants,
perhaps there was more to orthodoxy than he had thought. He
began to doubt his own liberal beliefs, and after a period of inner
turmoil he was "converted" to orthodox Calvinism. By the time
he left Beesd for Utrecht, he was convinced that he had found not
only a faith but also a Weltanschauung, and that a revitalized
version of sixteenth-century Calvinism would have a program for
social and economic problems as well as for questions of religion.
At Utrecht (1867-1870) he began to formulate such a program
and preach it.
The Netherlands in the third quarter of the nineteenth century
was hardly eager to hear such a message. This was the hey-day of
Liberalism, which was beginning to dominate all areas of thought
and action. Liberal philosophy, liberal economic theory, liberal
political theory, liberal educational theory, liberal theology—these
were the things which attracted the younger generation, and which
even the most reactionary conservative admitted to be the wave
of the future. In politics, the noted Liberal leader Jan Rudolf
Thorbecke (1798-1872) had established the principle of parlia-
mentary rule under a constitutional and limited monarchy, and
parliament (States-General) was controlled more and more clearly
by Liberals. Liberalism was the wave of the future; what place
then was there for a man like Kuyper?
There was one group, however, which welcomed Kuyper. This
was a group which stemmed from the evangelical movement of the
early 1800's—the Reveil. This movement had included some
intellectuals. The most noted of them, the Romantic poet Willem
474 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Bilderdijk (1756-1831), had denounced the spiritless uniformity

of the new age, and called for a return to the Calvinist "golden
age." This opposition to "Revolutionary atomism and uniformity"
was developed and systematized by the historian Groen Van
Prinsterer (1801-1876). Groen had been strongly influenced by
Edmund Burke, and also by Karl Von Haller (1763-1854) and
F. J. Stahl (1802-1861). Groen saw the basis for political and
social life not in the individual but in social groups such as the
family and the old guilds, and he attacked the rising Liberal
bourgeoisie as a "new aristocracy" which would be worse than the
old. Groen led a small "Antirevolutionary" group in the Second
Chamber (Lower House) of the States-General. Though he was
one of the few able to debate on equal terms with Thorbecke, he
had little political power. Support for the Antirevolutionaries
came largely from some of the Calvinist peasants, who were not
enfranchised. Kuyper had read Groen's works, and been im-
pressed by their outlook. In 1869 the aging Groen met the young
minister, and Kuyper became associated with the Antirevolution-
aries.2
Kuyper's influence increased rapidly. In 1872 he became the
editor of a new Antirevolutionary paper, De Standaard, and his
hard-hitting writing soon built up an impressive circulation among
the common people, the kleine luyden, whom he saw as the key to
the party's future. In 1874 he was elected to the Second Chamber,
a lonely figure among the Liberal majority and the Conservative
minority, and resigned his pastorate. In a series of fiery speeches
he proclaimed that Conservatism was dead and Liberalism dying,
and demanded universal family suffrage; state support for religious

2
For Bilderdijk, see Jan Romein, Erflaters van onze beschaving (Amster-
dam, 1947), III, 170-207. Groen's main work was his 1847 Ongeloof en
revolutie (Amsterdam, 1947). For his career, see P. A. Diepenhorst, Groen
Van Prinsterer (Kampen, 1932); cf. also Pierre Van Paasen, That Day Alone
(New York, 1948), p. 208. It is interesting to compare Groen in 1850 (cited
by Kuyper, Class Struggle, p. 16) and The Communist Manifesto. Groen: "It
is this freedom, this unchecked competition, this removal as much as possible
of the natural relationship of foreman and workman, which is tearing away the
social bonds; it is this which ends in the tyranny of the rich and the rule of
the bankers." The Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie, whenever it got
the upper hand, put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations, pitilessly
tore asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors'
and left remaining no other bond between man and man than naked self-
interest and callous cash payment."
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 475

schools, government regulation of laissez-faire capitalism, and an

Upper House representing occupational groups. He made little
impact on his fellow representatives; many Liberals openly jeered,
and some Conservatives denounced him as a dangerous radical who
wanted to overthrow the monarchy.3 In 1876, while Kuyper was
in Switzerland recovering from a temporary nervous breakdown,
Groen died, and Kuyper, then thirty-nine, became the recognized
leader of the Antirevolutionaries.
A dramatic opportunity to appeal to the kleine luyden soon
presented itself. The Liberals introduced and passed a bill which
prohibited any state aid to religious schools. Under Kuyper's
leadership, a last-minute petition to the king to veto the bill was
drawn up and circulated all over the country. Committees were
set up among both Calvinists and Catholics, and within a week
nearly half a million signatures were obtained. The king did
nothing (and indeed could not, constitutionally), but the strength
of anti-Liberal sentiment among many of the as yet unenfranchised
common people had been demonstrated. Kuyper, speaking to the
leader of the right wing Antirevolutionary party, his friend A. F.
de Savornin Lohman, predicted that the Liberal supremacy in
politics would be broken within ten years.4
The organization set up to handle the petition campaign was
used by Kuyper to help make the Antirevolutionary party a mass
party, the first party in the Netherlands with a mass membership,
central leadership, and after 1879 (Kuyper's Ons Program) a
well-defined program. Only a small part of the party's members,
however, were enfranchised. The petition campaign had also
shown that Catholics and Calvinists, despite their traditional
antipathy, could work together on occasion, and that the "school
question" was an issue which could bring them together. Kuyper
and Lohman and Herman Schaepman (1844-1903), the ablest of
the Catholic leaders, soon brought into existence the "monstrous"
coalition between Geneva and Rome, and in 1884 the Coalition
succeeded in winning a number of seats in the Lower House.5

3
Rullman, op. cit., p. 77. Kuyper's speeches are collected in his Kamarad-
viesen uit de jaren 1874- en 1875 (Amsterdam, 1890).
*Kasteel, op. cit., pp. 86-91. Within five days, 305,000 Calvinist and
164,000 Catholic signatures were obtained.
6
For Schaepman, see Romein, op. cit., IV, 178-209, and G. Brom, Schaep-
man (Amsterdam, 1936).
476 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Kuyper, meanwhile, was also busy with other aspects of his

program for a revitalized Calvinism. As early as 1870, shortly
after he left Beesd, he had talked of a Calvinist University which
could break the "Liberal monopoly" of higher education. An
association was formed to raise money for such a "Free Univer-
sity," and within a few years enough nickels and dimes ("dubbeltjes
en stuivertjes") had poured in from the Calvinist kleine luyden to
make this dream possible. In 1880 the University was opened in
Amsterdam. Kuyper gave the inaugural address, pledging to
continue the fight against the atomism and conformity of the
Liberal nineteenth century.6
He also stepped up the pace of his constant and bitter attacks
on the "Liberalized" Calvinist state church (the Hervormde Kerk)
which had, he said, betrayed its orthodox heritage and "sold out"
to modernistic theology. A growing group of younger ministers
followed him in his plea for a return to Calvinist orthodoxy. By
1885 the Hervormde Kerk was riddled with controversy and
faction, and in 1886 the break came. Kuyper led a hundred
thousand "true Calvinists" out of the state church.7
The Coalition continued to gain in strength. In 1887 the
long-discussed revision of the Constitution was adopted. It ex-
tended the suffrage slightly, removed what had seemed to many
to be a constitutional prohibition of state aid to religious schools,
and also made several changes which the Liberals wanted.
In 1888 the first election under the new Constitution was held,
ten years after Kuyper's 1878 prediction of victory. The Coalition
won 52 of the 100 seats in the Lower House, and an Antirevolu-
tionary was named prime minister, Baron Aeneas Mackay,8 a

6
The speech stressed the "sovereignty of the social spheres," and appeared
as Souvereiniteit in eigen kring (Amsterdam 1880). Kuyper for some years
taught dogmatics, Hebrew, homiletics, linguistics and Dutch literature at the
University — all in his "spare time."
7
This was the "Doleantie," and the "doleerende kerken" or "protesting
churches" soon joined (1892) with the "Afgescheidenen" (separatists) of 1834.
This earlier group of seceders from the state church had stemmed from the
Re veil, and were evangelistic and pietistic as well as Calvinist; Kuyper at first
had many reservations about joining them (see his Separatie en Doleantie,
Amsterdam, 1890; also Kasteel, op. cit., 60-66). The Gereformeerde Kerk
formed from the union has some 700,000 members in the Netherlands today.
8
For Baron Mackay (1838-1909), see B. De Gaay Fortman's essay in J. C.
H. De Pater, ed., Christendom en historie (Kampen, 1931), pp. 202-267; also
L. C. Suttorp, A. F. de Savornin Lohman (The Hague, 1948), pp. 222-229.
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 477

leader in the right wing of the party. The Mackay government

(1888-1891) was able to put through state subsidies to religious
schools, although these subsidies were small.
Yet Kuyper was not completely happy with the situation. The
right wing of the party, the Lohman-Mackay wing, was too con-
servative for his taste. In the 1888 elections Kuyper had sup-
ported a socialist in preference to a Liberal, and it seemed to him
that the Lohman-Mackay program was hardly democratic. In
private, Kuyper became increasingly critical of Lohman. Lohman
was too conservative; Lohman was not really Christian Democratic;
his social-economic ideas were Liberal; he did not favor suffrage
extension; he did not really believe in a mass party; he doubted
whether a Christian program was possible; he was really a man
of the Reveil rather than a true Calvinist.9
In 1891 Kuyper told the party gathering that it must stress its
democratic heritage even more strongly, and in another notable
speech the same year called for a "Christian socialism" to answer
the "burning question of the nineteenth century" — the class
struggle.10 The break between Kuyper and the party's right wing
came in 1893-1894, as a result of a progressive-Liberal proposal to
extend the suffrage. Kuyper, though he felt the bill did not go
far enough, supported it vigorously. Schaepman also favored it;
most of the Catholic leaders opposed it. Most Liberals opposed
it. And, Lohman and Mackay opposed it. The debate within
the Antirevolutionary party grew bitter, and by the time the bill
was voted down (1894), Lohman and the right wing left the

The name originally comes from a Scotch soldier who headed a regiment in
the Eighty Years War against Spain, and who settled in the Netherlands.
9
For Kuyper's support of the Socialist (later Anarchist) leader Domela
Nieuwenhuis (1846-1919), see Romein, op. cit., p. 224. L. W. C. Keuchenius
(1822-1893), a leader of the Antirevolutionary "left wing," was the only man
to shake Domela's hand when he took his seat in the Lower House. For the
gradually widening breach between Kuyper and Lohman, which also involved
Keuchenius, see especially Kasteel, op. cit., pp. 106-121, 158-160, 169-173;
also Suttorp, op. cit., pp. 52-67.
10
Kuyper, Maranatha (Amsterdam, 1891) for the speech to the party. The
other speech opened the Christian Social Congress of 1891, co-sponsored by
the party and Patrimonium, the Calvinist labor movement; Het sociale vraagstuk
. . . (see footnote 1). Fogarty, op. cit., p. 301, praises this speech as "a state-
ment of Christian social principles and policy worthy of the year which also
saw the appearance of Rerum Novarum." For "Christian Socialism," see pp.
40-41 of the English translation of the speech.
478 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

party and formed a new party, later known as the Christian

Historical party.
Kuyper drove on. He was now fifty-seven. "Our strength is
in the people," he said, "and we do not fear to march, if need be,
with the radicals and Socialists." The Antirevolutionary party
was reorganized, with more of a democratic emphasis than before.
The Coalition was patched up. Kuyper organized and spoke and
wrote, a man with "ten heads and a hundred arms." In 1901,
the Coalition swept 58 of the 100 seats in the Lower House, and
Kuyper became prime minister.11
The Coalition sweep in 1901 marked the end of the Liberal
party as the dominant party in Netherlands politics. It lingered
on for another generation, losing more and more votes to the
rising Socialist party. For the next fifty years after the turn of
the century, the Coalition was the dominant force in Dutch
politics.
Kuyper's term of office (1901-1905) was hectic, but he was
actually able to do little more than make a beginning on the re-
forms he had laid out. State recognition of the Free University
was finally forced through the Upper House, but only after Kuyper
had taken the unusual step of dissolving it and ordering new
elections which replaced the Liberal majority with a Coalition
majority. Important reforms were made in colonial policy, which
the Coalition felt should be based on "ethics rather than profits."
But any real social reform in the Netherlands itself proved to be
impossible because of Coalition conservatives. The Socialists, who
often held the balance of power in run-off elections in close dis-
tricts, were alienated and embittered by Kuyper's harsh measures
against the Socialist railroad strike of 1903. The campaign of 1905
was a wild one, with Liberals and Socialists campaigning mightily
against "Abraham the Terrible." The Coalition, by a slim margin,
lost control of the Lower House. Kuyper, now sixty-eight, left for
a lengthy Mediterranean cruise, confident that the Coalition would
soon return to power.12
11
Charles Benoist, "La r£forme electorate et les parties politiques aux
Pays Bas," Revue des Deux Mondes, CXXII (1894), 388-404; the quotation
is from p. 404. For Kuyper's furious energy, P. Rullman, op. cit., 232; cf.
Romein, op. cit., pp. 149-151. The Coalition was undoubtedly helped by the
suffrage extension of 1896, and also by Socialist support in run-off elections
when no candidate in a district had a majority.
12
Kuyper was accused of wanting to overthrow the monarchy; cf. footnotes
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 479

This proved to be true. The Liberal government, dependent

on Socialist votes for a working majority, fell in 1908, and Kuyper's
follower, Theodore Heemskerk, became prime minister. The elec-
tion of 1909 was a Coalition landslide (60 seats), and under Heem-
skerk (1909-1913) much of Kuyper's social program was put into
law by A. S. Talma (1864-1916). Kuyper continued in politics
during his seventies, as the party's "grand old man." In 1913 he
retired. In 1914, as war clouds gathered, he finished his last book,
the massive Antirevolutionaire Staatskunde. In 1920 he died.13
So much for Kuyper's career. We have now to outline his
ideas. They were already fixed in their main outline early in his
career, and later changed very little.14 Kuyper's writings are not
so much reports on a changing set of ideas as they are constant
reiteration of already formed ideas; reiteration, development, ex-
pansion, explication, reiteration—a constant hammering away at
his readers, so to speak. Some of his works are written in the
cool, logical, involuted style of a good theologian; others are
written at white heat, for Kuyper was also an excellent journalist.
God is sovereign over all of life, said Kuyper. This means that
the Christian has the task of transforming society in accordance
with God's revelation. The Christian may not withdraw. Reli-
gion, in one form or another, is always the basis for a society.
Religion, or world-outlook, or Weltanschauung, sooner or later
produces a pattern of social institutions and ideas.15
3 and 31; cf. Amry Vandenbosch, The Government of the Netherlands (Lex-
ington, 1947), p. 40 for Kuyper's occasional dissatisfaction with some aspects
of the monarchy. For the railroad strike and the threatened general strike of
1903, see A. J. C. Ruter, De spoorwegstaking van 1903 (Leiden, 1936), espe-
cially pp. 350-521. It is difficult to see what else Kuyper could have done
under the circumstances; see the views of the Socialist Romein, op. cit., p. 175.
18
There was some talk of Kuyper as prime minister in 1909, but for va-
rious reasons this did not happen. He was too old; the Liberals charged him
with earlier misuse of his office as prime minister by giving state medals to
party contributors; and, perhaps most important, "the lion was getting older,
and the whelps wanted their independence" (Kasteel, op. cit., p. 325; cf.
Romein, op. cit., p. 175). The younger men in the party supported Heemskerk.
For Talma, whose social thought was formed by Kuyper and by the English
Christian Socialists, see J. M. Vellinga, Talma's sociale arbeid (Hoorn, 1941).
For later development of Kuyper and Talma's "corporative" ideas, see Fogar-
ty, op. cit., pp. 58-60 (re publieke bedrijfsorganisaties).
" T h u s Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde (Amsterdam, 1918) is in many re-
spects (organization, style, etc.) an expanded version of Ons Program (Am-
sterdam, 1879).
15
For Kuyper's theological ideas as they affected his view of culture and
480 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Christianity as pattern-forming Weltanschauung has been in-

creasingly replaced by another Weltanschauung, that of the En-
lightenment: that is the real meaning of the French Revolution.

The sovereign God is dethroned, and man with his free will is
placed on the vacant seat of authority. All power, all authority,
proceeds from man. One goes from the individual to the many:
and in these many men, conceived of as the people, there lies the
deepest fountain of sovereignty. . . . Fists are clenched in defiance
against God, while man grovels before his fellow man. . . . 16

Since religions eventually pattern all of life, the main divisions

in the Netherlands are ideological. This means that the real
political divisions are not between Conservatives and Liberals and
Marxists, but between Christians (or at least those conscious of
the ideological implications of their faith) and the followers of the
Enlightenment. This is the basic antithesis which runs through
modem society. The antithesis is never complete in history, be-
cause of God's gratia universalis which affects all men; but it is
the most basic ideological distinction. There is thus little real
difference among Conservatism and Liberalism and Marxism; they
are all variant forms of one basic ideology. And, of the three,
Marxism is probably the most consistent. "The Liberal makes a
wholly arbitrary stop on a road which in accordance with his own
system must be followed through . . . as over against the Socialist,
he is in the wrong." How can the Liberal answer the masses'
Socialist demand that they be given "the voice in affairs which we
have coming to us; and then we will outvote you and supply a
wholly new social order that will give the death-blow to privilege
forever, and then finally, finally have for ourselves that which your

society, see S. J. Ridderbos, De theologische cultuurbeschouwing van Abraham

Kuyper (Kampen, 1947), especially pp. 230-252. Kuyper's acute sense of the
ramifications of ideological bias is noted (with approval) by Romein, op. cit.,
p. 160; cf. Winckel, op. cit., pp. 245-260. His sense of interrelationship be-
tween different aspects of Weltanschauungen (which sometimes led him astray)
is shown, for example, in his attempt to collate the idea of the mass state with
German pantheism (Kasteel, op. cit., p. 282), or his attack on Darwinian evo-
lutionary theory as an application of Manchester economics to biology (in
Evolutie, Amsterdam, 1899; Hugo De Vries, the Dutch anti-Darwinian evolu-
tionist, regarded this as one of the ablest attacks on Darwin; see Rullman,
Kuyper-bibliografie, III, 203).
18
Kuyper, Calvinism (1898), pp. 87, 178. Similar quotations could easily
be multiplied.
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 481

beautiful theories promised us but which you never gave us" ? 17

This shift in ideology, coupled with the Industrial Revolution,
has caused a deep-seated crisis in modern Western society.

There are thousands upon ten thousands who would rather de-
molish and annihilate everything than continue to bear the burden
of existing conditions. . . . This poison must in time pervade the
whole of society. . . . We have arrived at what is called modern
life, involving a radical breach with the Christian tradition of
the past . . . a political and social life characterized by the
decadence of parliamentarianism, by an ever stronger desire for
a dictator, by a sharp conflict between pauperism and capitalism,
while heavy armaments on land18and sea, even at the price of
financial ruin, become the ideal.

When this revolt of the downtrodden masses comes about, and

when—due to Liberal individualism—the basic social groups will
have been broken, then a materialistic Caesarism will usher in the
end of Western society. "Rome collapsed; and so, too, our Western
civilization will succumb, unless Christianity . . . intervenes to
redeem it." "All our independent democratic institutions are dis-
appearing one by one before the magic slogan of the one and
indivisible state. . . ." 19
Christianity furnishes the alternative, and the only alternative,
to this gloomy future. The problem is basically a religious problem,
arising because the Enlightenment and the French Revolution

cut off the horizon of an eternal life, impelled men to seek

happiness on earth and in earthly things, and thus created a sphere
of lower drives, in which money was the standard of value . . .
and animal law, dog eat dog, became the basic law for every
social relationship.20

Christianity, in contrast, means that people must be treated as

persons rather than as "machines of flesh." But what does this mean
in practice? On what grounds can the heartless Liberalism of the
present, or the mass-man State of the future, be resisted?

"Kuyper, Class Struggle (1891), pp. 36-38. Cf. Ons Program (1879),
No. 281; both Liberalism and Socialism are derived from the Enlightenment.
"Kuyper, Class Struggle, p. 25; Calvinism, pp. 173, 178.
"Kuyper, Class Struggle, p. 25; Van Paasen, op. cit., p. 212. Cf. Sou-
vereiniteit (1880) for a fuller comparison with Rome.
20
Kuyper, Class Struggle, pp. 35-40; Ons Program, No. 294,
482 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Kuyper's line of approach is already clear in one of his early

speeches in the Lower House (1874):
As soon as any organized social group reached a certain degree
of power in Christian European society, it realized that it had
its own life to live, with its own powers and its own characteristics.
First the social group of church officials gained influence, and
they called the canon law into existence. Then followed the nobles,
with feudal law. And . . . the bourgeoisie, who produced legal
codes suited to their needs. And now 21comes a fourth group, the
working class, with the same demand.
Society is made up of social groups, related organically, rather
than of individuals related impersonally. These groups, or spheres,
received their sovereignty from God, not from the state. They are
prior to the state. The state is necessary because of sin, and is
due to God's gratia universalis. The state's function is to serve
society; that is, to serve the social spheres which make up society.
This means that the state's role is to uphold and strengthen the
sovereignty of the social spheres. It has been the partial destruction
of the sovereignty of these social spheres intermediate between in-
dividual and state which has brought about the present social
crisis. 22
These spheres include, in the narrower sense, such things as
family, town, province, church, school, occupational groups; and,
in the wider sense, such things as science, literature, art, ideology.
The state may not interfere with the sovereignty of these spheres.
Thus it may not interfere with municipal autonomy, or artistic free-
dom, or freedom of conscience, or freedom of speech, or freedom
of education. A sound theoretical notion of freedom, said Kuyper,
is possible only with a correct view of society, one which recognizes
sphere sovereignty; otherwise there is no theoretical check on the
power of the majority.23

21
Kuyper, Kamaradviesen, p . 192. T h e same speech praises Von Ketteler
in Germany, and the Christian Socialists in England.
22
Kuyper's views on sphere-sovereignty appear in most of his major works;
see especially Souvereiniteit in eigen kring ( 1 8 8 0 ) . T h e best critical treatment
is perhaps that of J. D . Dengerink, Critische-historische onderzoek naar de
sociologische ontwikkeling van het beginsel der 'souvereiniteit in eigen firing"
in de 19e en 20e eeuw (Kampen, 1948), pp. 94-161.
28
Kuyper gives various listings of the social spheres, which differ some-
what in detail; see, for example, Ons Program, ch. I V ; Souvereiniteit; Anti-
revolutionaire Staathunde, I : 262-265.
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 483

Kuyper's social thought thus tends more towards syndicalism

or Guild Socialism than it does towards a hierarchically organized
corporative state. Society is not arranged vertically but horizon-
tally. The state's task is to protect the social spheres. This may,
of course, mean extensive state intervention in certain cases, notably
when a social sphere is too weak to exercise its true sovereignty;
then the state must help it become strong. Each sphere has its own
specific sovereignty which it must not go beyond; if it attempts to,
the state must intervene. The areas of sovereignty of each sphere
can be worked out from God's revelation, and depend ultimately on
the various aspects of the human personality.23
This conception of society, said Kuyper, implies a definite
program of action, especially in four areas: suffrage, education,
labor, and colonial policy. These are already marked out in his
Ons Program (1879).
The right to control the course of society belongs to the social
spheres. This means that the most basic of these spheres, the
family, should have the vote. Kuyper demanded universal family
suffrage in the 1870's, long before the Liberals or Socialists agitated
for suffrage extension. Other spheres besides the family should
have a voice in policy: Kuyper therefore favored an Upper House
composed of other spheres, such as agriculture, business, labor,
universities, and so forth.24
As for education, sphere sovereignty implies that the state
should not control education. This depends rather on the social
spheres, especially the family. Families of any given ideology
should be able to educate their children in that ideology. Occu-
pational groups such as labor should have their own forms of
education. Thus the state should give financial support to—but
not control—trade schools, technical schools, and religious schools.
Education must be freed from state control (hence the "Free
University").25
The state must also intervene to help the sphere of labor, said
24
Ons Program, No. 279; Calvinism, pp. 90-99; Antirevolutionaire Staat-
kunde, I I , 340-354, etc.
25
State support for religious schools was finally accepted wholeheartedly
under the extra-parliamentary government of Cort Van Der Linden (1913-
1917); see L. G. J. Verberne, Nieuwste Geschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1938; Vol.
IV of H. Brugmans, ed., Geschiedenis van Nederland), 333-335. This was part
of a "deal" which also put through universal male suffrage on an individual
basis.
484 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Kuyper. Laissez-faire capitalism has produced a new tyranny: "In

all of Europe, a rich bourgeoisie rules over an impoverished work-
ing class, doomed . . . to sink into the morass of the proletariat,"
and "living in a state of arbitrary dependence sometimes worse
than slavery." 26
The sphere of labor, therefore, must have: the right to organize,
and state recognition of labor organizations; extension of the suf-
frage to all workingmen; labor representation in a functionally
organized Upper House; a code of laws guaranteeing safe working
conditions, an end to child labor, and the like; and a compulsory
insurance plan which would give security in sickness and old age;
and, eventually, the right to set up legally binding codes governing
its own sphere.27
In colonial policy, too, the state must intervene in order to
build up a separate sphere. Indonesia is a separate sphere, and
must be helped to develop in its own way. Kuyper denounced
Liberal colonial policy as "exploitation," and indeed Kuyper's term
of office (1901-1905) resulted in a noteworthy change in colonial
policy. Forty million guilders were appropriated for the economic
improvement of the islands, and a start made in Indonesian self-
government.28
So much, then, for Kuyper's social program, and the anti-
Liberalism on which it was based. Basic to it is the insistence on
man as a person who can find true freedom only in organic social
ties; and these, said Kuyper, become impossible in either the Liberal
or Socialist outlook.29
How successful was Kuyper? There can be little doubt that he
"placed a stamp on the civilization of the Netherlands it was never
to lose," and most of his program was carried out by the Coalition
26
Kuyper, Class Struggle, p . 36; De Gemeene Grade (3 vols., Leiden, 1902-
1905), I, 440-442; cf. Christus en de sociale nooden (Amsterdam, 1895).
" K a s t e e l , op. cit., pp. 204-240; Winckel, op. cit., pp. 186-220; etc. Cf.
Kuyper's Proeve van pensionsregeling voor werkleiden en huns gelijken (Am-
sterdam, 1895) for insurance plans. Cf. footnote 13. For Kuyper's role in the
Calvinist labor movement, see, for example, Riiter, op. cit., pp. 150-155.
28
Amry Vandenbosch, The Dutch East Indies (Berkeley, 1944), pp. 63-73;
J. S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (New York,
1944), pp. 174-175, 229-255; Kasteel, op. cit., pp. 298-316.
29
See Class Struggle: Pensionsregeling, pp. 14-17; etc. For personalism,
horizontal social groups, etc., in other Christian Democratic movements, see
Fogarty, op. cit., pp. 27-48. For Kuyper's stress on Christ's human as well as
divine nature, see Ridderbos, op. cit., pp. 132-138.
 ABRAHAM KUYPER'S ATTACK ON LIBERALISM 485

he did so much to inspire. But as one goes through the history

of the Antirevolutionary party after 1920, one is struck by an in-
creasing tendency to be satisfied with the status quo. In a sense,
the party was perhaps ruined by success; once a party's program
has been carried out, what more can it do? 3 0
Perhaps the loss of Kuyper also had something to do with it.
Kuyper was a powerful figure, a charismatic leader, a Napoleonic
character, a man about whom legends clustered, "Abraham the
Terrible." Jan Romein, the Socialist historian, in his sympathetic
sketch of Kuyper, pictures him in 1918, two years before he died,
when Frisian soldiers moving up to the frontiers went out of then-
way to demonstrate and cheer before his house in the Hague: "he
might have seen himself, for a fleeting moment, as Cromwell, and
these soldiers as his Ironsides; the Cromwell he always wanted to
be, and in a certain sense was." 3 1
In any case, he remains the most notable figure the Christian
political movement in the Netherlands produced. He was, by most
definitions, Christian Democratic. He always thought of himself
as such. "Christian Democrat—that is the title of honor for every
true Calvinist," he said; and "I have always been, and hope to
die as, a Christian Democrat." He surely deserves a place, it seems
to me, in that synthetic and comparative study of the Christian
Democratic movement which yet remains to be written. A good
example of the confusion, which that movement has sometimes
caused historians, can be given from Kuyper's career, and can
indeed serve as a summary of that career: in the same year that
an English historian dubbed him a clerical reactionary, the leader
of the Dutch anarchists saluted him as a kindred spirit.32
30
VanderKroef, op. cit., p . 30, for the quotation. For the later fortunes
of the party, see Brugmans, op. cit., also I. H . Gossses and N. Japikse, Hand-
boek tot de staatkundige geschiedenis van Nederland ( T h e Hague, 1947),
pp. 892 ff.
81
Romein, op. cit., p . 177.
82
Ibid., p . 157; Antirevolutionaire Staatkunde, I I , 246 for the quotations.
For the varying evaluations, H . W. Wilkens, The Netherlands (London, 1907),
p. 66, and Domela's 1907 letter to Kuyper, given by Kasteel, op. cit., pp.
143-147.