The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper

Book excerpt: Like any legacy, a cultural legacy cuts both ways: it can be the legacy left behind by those who came before, and the legacy left behind for those who come after. Both kinds are included when we think of “the legacy of Abraham Kuyper.” In this concise and accessible presentation, Harry Van Dyke presents for our edification a gallery of both legators and legatees of the Kuyperian legacy. For Kuyper certainly did have forerunners. He did not operate in a vacuum, appearing all at once, a blazing comet that for a time lit up the sky over his little country and then disappeared beyond the horizon. And he had even more numerous followers. Van Dyke shows us how Kuyper gratefully inherited a hundred-year-old movement and brought it into, in Kuyper’s words, “rapport with the times.” He then provides examples of followers who built on this legacy, and evaluates the varied results at which they arrived. The upshot is a multilevel snapshot that properly situates and contextualizes Kuyper for those familiar only with him and a select few others of the neo-Calvinist movement.