Just as both political parties in the United States have listened carefully to various minority voting blocs, we as Christians should seek to articulate our point of view, to articulate policies we would like to see enacted, to advocate protections for our families, and then begin to lobby for those things and help politicians see that we will not vote for people who are against our interests. But before we can do that, we must know what our interests are.

We are living in an age of profound cultural shift. Up until the early twenty-first century, Western history was dominated by a form of Christianity that was legally established and culturally honored. While not everyone was a Christian, being a Christian was respectable, and Christianity was generally recognized as the dominant cultural and moral outlook in society.

That has dramatically changed in the last ten years, signaling the end of that cultural establishment. Many Christians feel disoriented. What is this new world, and how should we relate to it?

These are questions that we find ourselves rather ill-prepared to address because up until recently, we could assume things that can no longer be assumed regarding how people think and how they react to Christianity. Amid these changes, I have found considerable help in thinking through these issues in the life and work of Abraham Kuyper.

Kuyper (1837–1920), a Dutchman, lived in a place and time where the issues we face today were already beginning to manifest themselves. He was a pastor in the state Reformed church but eventually broke away from it, concluding that the state church could not be reformed as a whole and believing that there needed to be a faithful church for people to belong to. He also founded the Free University of Amsterdam, so named because it was free from state control. Kuyper believed that it was vital to have a place where Christians could be engaged in top-flight scientific and intellectual activity.

He served a number of years as a pastor but increasingly came to believe the Lord was calling him into politics. He believed that there needed to be a clearer Christian witness in politics in the Netherlands, and in 1874, he was elected to parliament. The Dutch constitution did not allow clergymen to serve in parliament, so he resigned from the ministry. Kuyper felt strongly that he needed to bear witness in the public arena to Christ and to a Christian perspective. He was persuaded that the modern world required new reflection by Christians as to how we would live in it, and he believed that Christian influence was dying.

Kuyper saw a society that said Christians could have their personal beliefs but that their faith was entirely a private matter. Christianity had nothing to say in the public arena, and it would be wrong for Christianity to have anything to say regarding politics. In other words, Christianity is private; politics is public. But Kuyper utterly rejected that notion and insisted that Christians should have a voice in the public square.

Kuyper believed, however, that this voice in the public square should look different from how previous generations had approached it. He noted that our ancestors in the days of Christendom believed that it was the job of the civil government to enforce Christianity and to outlaw all non-Christian religion. In their view, the way forward for Christians was to get the magistrate to do his duty: close the doors of false churches, stop the teaching of anti-Christian ideas at the university, and insist that society be dominated by Christian ideas. Kuyper knew that this way of thinking was present in the confession of his own church. Article 36 of the Belgic Confession discusses the responsibility of civil magistrates, and one of the responsibilities listed in that confession is to uproot the kingdom of Antichrist.

In the language of the sixteenth century (when the Belgic Confession was written), the kingdom of Antichrist was Roman Catholicism. So is it the magistrate’s responsibility to close the Roman Catholic churches? Is that the right thing to do? Is that how we are going to advance the kingdom of Christ? Kuyper said that this view fundamentally corrupted Christianity by turning it into a coercive religion. He noted that when we look at the New Testament, we don’t find Jesus calling anyone to be coercive in matters of religion. We find Jesus being persuasive in matters of religion. We find Jesus seeking to win converts in matters of religion. But, Kuyper said, wherever the civil government tries to enforce religion, it corrupts religion.

Kuyper was so consistent over time that eventually he convinced the Dutch Reformed churches to amend their confession to say that the duty of civil magistrates is to ensure that the gospel may be freely preached—not to stop others from preaching. He believed that Christians needed a whole new perspective regarding how to advance the cause of Christ and speak for Christ in this new world. And this presents an opportunity for us today to rethink our strategies and to find a new way to communicate and advance the cause of Christ.

Kuyper believed that to understand ourselves and to communicate more effectively to the world, we must emphasize certain fundamental Christian perspectives. How did he encourage modern Christians to interact with the world and to see themselves? Let me suggest five points from Kuyper’s life and work.

1. Christians Need to See That One of the Most Basic Issues Confronting Us Is, How Do We See the World? How Do We Relate to the World?

According to Kuyper, the basic choice before us is to see the world either as normal or as abnormal. The dominant thinking of the French Revolution, the new science, and the emerging philosophy of the nineteenth century taught that this world is normal—it is the way it has always been.

But Kuyper said that Christians must challenge that attitude and insist that this world is abnormal. It is not what God intended in creation. This is not the world of righteousness that God made; rather, this world is abnormal because of the fall into sin. Interestingly, Kuyper believed that one of the great enemies of a Christian worldview in the nineteenth century was the theory of evolution, because at its heart, evolution says that this world is normal. It claims that the world has been developing and changing according to normal patterns that are scientifically observable. Evolution, therefore, fundamentally denies the doctrine of the fall into sin.

And so, when we look at the world as Christians, we must recognize that our view of the world stands at odds with the way that many others view it, and we must insist that the world is not the way it was meant to be. Consequently, Christians must not only say that the world isn’t as it should be but must also be able to articulate the change toward which we should move.

2. The Change That Christians Should Be Committed to Pursuing Is a Matter of Reformation, Not Revolution

According to Kuyper, the spirit of the French Revolution was to tear down, destroy, and start over, believing that very little of the past could be preserved because the past was corrupt and radical change was needed.

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