{"id":32150,"date":"2012-09-03T00:09:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T05:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=32150"},"modified":"2012-09-03T07:30:15","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T12:30:15","slug":"rich-mouw-abraham-kuyper-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/09\/03\/rich-mouw-abraham-kuyper-and-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich Mouw, Abraham Kuyper, and Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

How does the Christian live in, relate to and transform culture?<\/strong> This question, one that draws in the need for expertise in about fifty disciplines, shapes the lucid and informed and very brief study by Rich Mouw,\u00a0Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. Kuyper\u2019s approach to the Christian and culture is a classic Calvinist formulation, but it has far more nuance than most. It seems most evangelicals and mainliners are generally in favor of the approach of Kuyper, though I doubt many operate with his sphere sovereignty. What survives then is a kind of unreflective activism. Kuyper can help.<\/p>\n

What do you think of Kuyper\u2019s famous \u201cMine!\u201d approach?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many Christians are instinctive Constantinians, even in our pluralistic world. They want the church to control everything, and are more than active in doing what they can to make that happen. Other Christians, often associated with Anabaptists (though that is a stereotype since there is a variety of anabaptist views), believe in forming a Christian culture in the Christian ecclesia\/church and through the ecclesia they witness to the realities of the kingdom. For them participation in culture will have less importance, if any at all. So some withdraw completely while others participate some, though the oddity today is that an increasing number of anabaptists are sliding into a political activism that shows little contrast with Constantinians. As I said above, I suspect most Christians are a watered-down version of the Calvinist approach to the Christian and culture.<\/p>\n

Mouw\u2019s thesis is to show what Kuyper thought, and Kuyper \u2014 a multi-tasker if ever one was (he was pastor, theologian, journalist, university founder, political leader, president, etc) \u2014 pushed for what is called \u201csphere sovereignty.\u201d Here\u2019s a diagram found on the internet:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A secular model of this would replace \u201cGod\u201d with \u201cState,\u201d while in a pure secular model both \u201cGod\u201d and \u201cChurch\u201d would be erased. The radical anabaptist model would move God to the left over \u201cChurch\u201d and draw a big fat line up and down between \u201cChurch\u201d and \u201cFamily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kuyper\u2019s thesis is that each sphere is to sustain its own sovereignty and methods and principles etc so that \u201cState\u201d does State things and leaves \u201cSchool\u201d and \u201cFamily\u201d and \u201cChurch\u201d alone. In American history Roger Williams was one who propounded this view with regard to Church and State.<\/p>\n

The Christian\u2019s impact in all of this is to be established in circles of influence inside each circle so that the Christian\u2019s engagement in culture is within each sphere, not by raising \u201cState\u201d to under \u201cGod\u201d and then through the \u201cState\u201d to reshape each sovereignty. So, the influence is a transformation from within the sovereignty of each sphere and not by the use of coercion or power or authority from another sphere. I wonder if James Davison Hunter\u2019s \u201cfaithful witness\u201d approach is a version of Kuyper.<\/p>\n

This stuff is not simple since humans don\u2019t simply dwell in a sphere: we inter-dwell in spheres and so we exercise our influence in various ways in differing spheres.<\/p>\n

The big theme in Mouw\u2019s well-written book is that over each of these spheres Christ declares \u201cMine!\u201d This leads to the Christian mission of influence, but it always carries with it the danger of Constantine. That approach is not just how the Catholics shaped European culture from the 4th Century on but can be seen in the German Lutheran Church, Calvin\u2019s Geneva, England\u2019s Anglican Church, and the Puritans in the USA in their own communities. So \u201cMine!\u201d is the problem. How to live out the \u201cMine!\u201d in a pluralist culture?<\/p>\n

Mouw knows Kuyper\u2019s word isn\u2019t the last word for the Calvinist theory of sphere sovereignty so he explores a few topics on which Kuyper did not speak, including race and evangelicalism and expanding the role of church and family and Islam.<\/p>\n

This Kuyperian tradition has a tendency to understand Kingdom as a manifestation of common grace and to get Kingdom too far from church, and to see Kingdom wherever there is something good in this world \u2014 and I push back against this because of how kingdom is used by Jesus (I don\u2019t think Jesus would ever say Herod\u2019s good roads were kingdom stuff or what Caesar was doing in Rome with providing dole to be kingdom stuff). I also get a bit concerned with spherical sovereignties that are not integrated with one another enough or that are not connected enough to church \u2026 but all this is saying that I\u2019m anabaptistic and Kuyper, well, he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does the Christian live in, relate to and transform culture? This question, one that draws in the need for expertise in about fifty disciplines, shapes the lucid and informed and very brief study by Rich Mouw,\u00a0Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction. Kuyper\u2019s approach to the Christian and culture is a classic Calvinist formulation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1643,76,484,1743,1732],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calvinism","category-christianity","category-church","category-kingdom-of-god","category-public-issues"],"yoast_head":"\nRich Mouw, Abraham Kuyper, and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How does the Christian live in, relate to and transform culture? 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