Followup on Kuyper: where the rubber meets the road for many of us

Since first writing my essay on Kuyperianism, I have gotten a lot of feedback from various people. One line of feedback has been that my characterizations of Kuperianism do not so much fit for Kuyper himself as for later people who called themselves Kuyperian. There is some truth in that, but I have also gone back and read a fair amount more of Kuyper, and I still stand by my main characterizations.

But in this essay I want to focus on the second main theme of the feedback I have gotten. This is that, regardless of whether Kuyper said it or not, or whether it influenced churches and movements in the past, we still have a rubber-meets-the-road issue before us. This is the question that every young, well-educated Christian must ask: is going into “ministry,” specifically church work such as preaching and evangelism, a higher calling than work in a “secular” field such as science, art, or humanities? Essentially, you can boil down the two schools of thought that I described as “fundamentalist” and “Kuyperian” by their answers to this question. The fundamentalist says “yes” and the Kuyperian says no. Read more…

A Response to: “The Kuyperian Vision for culture: what it is, and how is it doing? by J. Hommes

I heartily welcome your essay on Kuyperian thought and practice and have enjoyed the discussion it has already created on this important topic. Like you, I have embraced Kuyperian ideas in the past, and would in many ways still consider myself Kuyperian in many ways. I grew up on the mission field (in Japan) where other models of the relationship between Christianity and culture were offered that I found unsatisfactory. Thus, particularly at Calvin College, I found the Kuyperian vision challenging and refreshing. But, I share some of your concerns for the direction in which some of the self-professed heirs of Kuyper are going or have gone. Read more…

The Kuyperian vision for culture: what is it, and how is it doing? Part III

A Balanced View?

I have been fairly hard on the Kuyperian vision. I also am not advocating the fundamentalist/Puritan model. So what is the alternative? Here are several principles for a different way: Read more…

The Kuyperian vision for culture: what is it, and how is it doing? Part II

Having laid out the general tenets of the Kuyperian vision and its contrast to the Puritan vision, I now want to cast a critical eye on it. We have now had over 100 years of Kuyperian theory and practice. How is it doing? How has it worked out? I will break this into two parts, theory and practice. Read more…

The Kuyperian vision for culture: what is it, and how is it doing? Part I

Many evangelicals have never heard of Abraham Kuyper, but most have been influenced by him far more than they know.  Kuyper was a Dutch pastor and politician who lived in the last 1800’s up to the early 1900’s. He was initially an enthusiastic “modernist” and was trained in modernism at seminary. Modernism is the school of thought, sometimes also called classic liberalism, which says that science, reason and logic are the hope for the future of mankind, sufficient for solving all important problems, and the old notions of religion and traditional morality must be discarded as things of the past. Kuyper, as a modernist, encountered robust, living Christian orthodoxy in his first experience as a rural pastor in Holland, and was eventually converted.  He still loved science and the academic world (“science,” as he would have defined it, included not just the “hard sciences” but all the reasoned endeavors of the university). He eventually propounded a very definite vision for the interaction of the church and culture, which can be called the Kuyperian vision, though of course others contributed to this view before and after Kuyper.  Read more…

Ack! Raising our hands in worship!

Every now and then I encourage people to raise their hands in worship. Generally it hasn’t “taken”. Typically at City Reformed you will see just elders raising their hands during worship, not many other people. Why not?

I have heard various things from various people. One line is to say that people are reacting against the over-emotionalism of other churches. Raising hands seems “fake” to them.

Ok, sure, there are churches that go overboard. But should we reject biblical practices just because others use them in the context of other things we don’t like? Raising hands is entirely scriptural: see Psalms 63:4, 119:48, 134:2, 141:2, 143:6, Lamentations 2:19, 3:41, Isaiah 1:15, and 1 Tim 2:8. The general symbolism is one of humility and prayer, of being “empty handed” before the Lord and “beseeching” him. It is an “open” body position that makes us feel vulnerable.

We also stand in worship, and bow our heads when we pray. If other churches also do those things in an overly pretentious manner, should we avoid them? Should we not sing, because other churches go overboard with singing?

In fact, I think some people do hold back from singing, for maybe the same reason that others don’t ever lift up their hands. It is not so much from not wanting to be fake, but from feeling “that is not me.” And I think that is really more what is going on with people not raising hands. We have a very “western, academic” culture in our church. It doesn’t feel “natural” to us. In other churches around the world, we would nearly be mocked as the “frozen chosen.” (It is hard to imagine us ever becoming a truly multicultural church if people from other cultures coming to our church feel they are standing with a bunch of static fenceposts!)

I don’t want to force anyone to do something they aren’t comfortable with. But I do want to encourage people to stretch themselves a little. We were given bodies and we are told to worship God with our full selves– mind, body, and spirit.  Using our bodies just a little, to stand, and raise our hands, can help us feel more like our whole person is worshipping God.

This brings me to another line of objection I have heard. Isn’t there a slippery slope? If we say we should use our bodies in worship, where do we draw the line? Should we run around, bark like dogs, etc?

A great presbyterian principle is “decently and in order”. We encourage people to do things together in worship, in unity as the leadership directs, not randomly and in response to whatever feeling we have.

A good principle is this: we should use our bodies, but our minds should direct them, not be led by them. Some churches seem to interpret any feeling from their bodies as “the leading of the spirit” and end up nearly running amock.  We need to decide what is honoring to God with our minds, and then do it, whether it feels “natural” or not. That is a key point: to refrain from lifting hands because it doesn’t “feel” natural, is to be controlled by your body and not your mind, no different from the person who acts on every impulse to jump and shout.

A better reason not not lift your hands would be if you decided that it really isn’t what God wants you to do. But I hope you will look at the Scriptures above, and consider that this fairly worldwide and historical practice is indeed a way to honor God , even if it stretches you out of your western academic mold a bit.

Church, Politics, and Non-Profits

Christians have a long history of involvement in politics in democratic societies, including the Abolitionist movement with Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Progressive movement with WIlliams Jenning Bryan and Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives), the Civil Rights movement, and the pro-life movement, all associated strongly with churches, along with other movements that perhaps look more misguided, such as the Prohibitionist movement and the Free Silver movement. Should we avoid politics today as Christians? What role should City Reformed have? 
Read more…

Thoughts on Jubilee

I attended the Jubilee conference in downtown Pittsburgh last Friday night, as a guest. Overall, I thought it was a great time to get all these college students together to get them thinking about culture and God’s calling in their lives, and worshipping together.

I want to respond to some comments made by the keynote speaker for the night, Gabe Lyons, who is apparently making a name for himself as someone who is applying marketing research and strategy to the church. Overall, I could relate to where he was coming from, and appreciated his zeal for the kingdom, but I see some dangers in how it was expressed. Read more…