Kuyper's Sphere Sovereignty and Totalitarian America

Robert Godfrey gives a good summary of Abraham Kuyper’s life in a recent talk I listened to.

Right at the end for five minutes, he describes the idea of sphere sovereignty and puts it in Kuyper’s historical setting, which I hadn’t heard done before.

Kuyper was a generation or so after Napoleon.  The “anti-Revolution” political party that Kuyper started reacted against the totalitarianism of the French revolution.  That monstrosity asserted that the state was the ultimate rule for society.  Kuyper said, no, the ultimate rule for society does not reside in any one human form of government, but is divided among several: family, church, and state.  The division helps keep each one honest when all are prone to over-reach selfishly.

We see this play out today.

Family over-reach arrives in ultra-conservative patriarchy, where father over-rules church elders, and keeps the state away with his guns in his bunker.  Or it arrives in the soft evangelical way, where family schedule simply shrugs at church and civic obligations.  “Go to a Christmas church service?  That time is for FAMILY.”

Church over-reach arrives in heavy-handed institutions like popes or bishops, or Presbyterian sessions overly keen on wielding their authority.  They deliver statements like edicts from on high regarding what an individual MUST do in a specific situation, to avoid disciplinary action, and to truly please God by submitting to His earthly authorities.

State over-reach arrives in the West with soft promises to help do things that the state was never meant to do: subsidize home loans, extend student loans, force us to get insurance for various things we don’t always want, help us eat healthier, and take away our second amendment rights to keep and bear arms.  (Ask Virginians about that last one these days.)  In developing countries, state over-reach arrives when the state “protects” Christian minorities from itself by forbidding assembly and jailing its pastors (China), or allowing marauders to attack them, so they move elsewhere (Nigeria).

As you can see from these examples, getting sphere sovereignty wrong has dire consequences.  We would do well to study the idea in Scripture, and advocate for biblical justice in these areas.