Abraham Kuyper

Book excerpt: Richard Mouw was first drawn to Abraham Kuyper s writings about public life in the turbulent 1960s. As he struggled to find the right Christian stance toward big social issues such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Mouw discovered Kuyper s Lectures on Calvinism and, with it, a robust vision of active Christian involvement in public life that has guided him ever since. In this short and personal introduction Mouw sets forth Kuyper s main ideas on Christian cultural discipleship, including his views on sphere sovereignty, the antithesis, common grace, and more. Mouw looks at ways to update and, in some places, even correct Kuyper s thought as he applies it to such twenty-first-century issues as religious and cultural pluralism, technology, and the challenge of Islam.