The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancienrégime to the “age of mobilization,” from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders, and organizational tactics. Abraham Kuyper was a key instigator in this cultural transformation as the populist organizer of the Netherlands’ first modern political party (and eventually prime minister), as a newspaper editor who used modern media to educate and mobilize his popular base, as one who broadened enfranchisement in church and political society, and as the ... More

The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancienrégime to the “age of mobilization,” from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders, and organizational tactics. Abraham Kuyper was a key instigator in this cultural transformation as the populist organizer of the Netherlands’ first modern political party (and eventually prime minister), as a newspaper editor who used modern media to educate and mobilize his popular base, as one who broadened enfranchisement in church and political society, and as the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands’ first private university. Before any of these things, however, Kuyper was a pastor in the Netherlands Reformed Church, and amid this upheaval the Netherlands Reformed Church faced an unprecedented crisis as it lost its taken-for-granted social standing. The church would have to “go Dutch,” so to speak. It would have to pay its own way, metaphorically and in some respects literally. This book examines the new legitimation that Abraham Kuyper offered the church through hisCalvinistfree church theology and how various other aspects of his theology, including his theology of sacraments, particularly baptism, church and state,and public theology, developed in conjunction with his ecclesiology. Kuyper’s ecclesiology provides a window onto problems that ecclesiology in general faced due to the social and cultural shifts of the nineteenth century.