Abraham kuyper biography

In this first full-scale English biography of Abraham Kuyper, the highly influential religious and political leader of Dutch Calvinists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, historian James D. Bratt draws connections between the life and thought of Kuyper and current debates in America today. Bratt’s study covers Kuyper’s early years, his development as a person, his various leadership roles and spheres of influence, and the considerable ongoing impact of his ideas.

A convinced Calvinist and a distinctly modern public figure, Kuyper held a wide variety of roles over the course of his life — minister, newspaper editor, educational innovator, politician, religious reformer, and prime minister of the Netherlands (1901-1905). Kuyper’s life demonstrates how devotees of any faith can carry on a responsible public life in contention — and concert — with people of other convictions.

Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary.

Childhood and Youth

Abraham Kuyper was born on October 29, 1837 to Rev. and Mrs. J. F. Kuyper, in the small fishing village of Maassluis, the Netherlands. It was a time of great apostasy in the Reformed Church, and Modernists occupied thousands of pulpits and all the important posts in the schools. Kuyper’s own father was somewhere between liberal modernism and mildly Reformed.

Two reform movements had swept the Netherlands—one a mere gesture towards reformation, the other a genuine reform of the church. The first, called the Reveil (Renewal), had spread throughout Protestant Europe, was more humanistic than ecclesiastical, and hoped to bring reformation into the church from within. The second, called De Afscheiding (The Separation), was led by Hendrik DeCock, and was composed of thousands of godly and pious people who were among the lower classes, whom Kuyper himself was later to call de kleine luyden (the little folk). These had separated from the false state church to re-establish the church of Christ. Kuyper was not touched by either movement.

Bram (as he was called) was home-schooled and early learned French and German. He was a promising student from the outs

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