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Going Dutch in the Modern Age: Abraham Kuyper's Struggle for a Free Church in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

JOHN HALSEY WOOD Jr
JOHN HALSEY WOOD Jr*
Affiliation:
Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 2146 Gray Avenue, Saint Louis, Mo 63117, USA; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancien régime to the ‘age of mobilisation’, says Charles Taylor, from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders and organisational tactics. Amid this upheaval the Netherlands Reformed Church faced an unprecedented crisis as it lost its taken-for-granted social status. This essay examines the new legitimation that Abraham Kuyper offered the Church through his Free Church theology, and how various other aspects of his theology, including his baptismal and public theology, developed in conjunction with his ecclesiology. Kuyper's ecclesiology thus offers a case study of problems that ecclesiology in general faced due to the social and cultural shifts of the nineteenth century.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 513 - 532
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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39 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Vrijheid: Bevestigingsrede van Dr. Ph. S. van Ronkel’ (1873), in Predicatiën, in de jaren 1867 tot 1873, tijdens zijn predikantschap in het Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerkgenootschap, gehouden te Beesd, te Utrecht, en te Amsterdam, Kampen 1913, 399, 405, 407.

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53 Idem, Tractaat van de reformatie der kerken, sig. 26.

54 Ibid. sig. 12. See also his Tractaat van de reformatie der Kerken, sigs. 20, 26, and Separatie en doleantie, Amsterdam 1890, 28–30.

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63 Idem, Tractaat van de reformatie der Kerken, sig. 17.

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70 Kuyper, Abraham, De zegen des heeren over onze kerken: rede ter inleiding op het gebed voor het samenkomen der Gereformeerde Kerken in Generale Synode gehouden in de Noorderkerk te Middelburg, op 10 Augustus 1896, Amsterdam 1896, 22.Google Scholar

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83 Ibid. 197.

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