Kuyper and Bush

[rmwilliamsll]

Kuyper and the Bush Faith Based Initiatives



there is a fascinating article about the Kuyperian origins of Bush's faith based initiatives---

for instance:

Kuyper was both anti-socialist and anti-individualist. He believed that social order, and human flourishing within and through this order, are rooted in divinely ordained social structures that constitute a “natural” community, theologically and morally prior to the state (whether it is democratic or not). The family, the church, charitable associations, and confessional schools— “intermediary” structures between the individual and the state—are elements of this natural community, and are fully as real as individual persons. Government agencies, programs, and rules form the political community. In more conventional, pietistic theology, the political realm arises with the “fall into sin” and is viewed negatively, as a deterrent to violence and destruction in the postlapsarian world of fleshly human pride. Kuyper embraced a more positive view of the state. In his Free University speech, citing Proverbs 29:4, he said that the state “gives stability to the land by justice.” But “public justice” is a coordinating, subsidiary power. Apart from shared needs such as national defense and infrastructure, the doctrinal watchword for the state is “sovereignty in one’s own circle” (souvereiniteit in eigen kring).

from: http://bostonreview.net/BR30.2/daly.html


it is a little longer than most online articles but well worth the time to read.

via vector for me was: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/04/08/no-compassion/