Daniel Choi

Prepared for Dr. Gayle Doorbos

Calvin Theological Seminary - 55840 Christian Reformed Church History

Spring 2026 Distance

Abraham Kuyper’s Influence Over Apartheid in South Africa

Introduction

Abraham Kuyper (1837 - 1930) was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. By 1874, Kuyper entered politics with one foot in the ecclesial setting and the other in the political realm. In 1880, Kuyper notably helped find the Free University of Amsterdam, which began to direct the Church “in shaping contemporary culture through its impact on the life of common people.” Kuyper famously developed the idea of Sphere Sovereignty, which understood that “human life is rightly characterized by pluralism with respect to both social structures and worldviews.” Kuyper’s perspective assumes that God holds sovereignty over all things and provides derivative sovereignty to every other institution, such as families, schools, and the state. This pluralism allows each institution to be self-sustaining and supports a diversity of worldviews. Kuyper famously gave his lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary and articulated Calvinism as a world system, which is now regarded as Neo-Calvinism. While Kuyper’s views embrace a posture of diversity, his’s own remarks regarding South Africans have led many to consider Kuyper to be an example of a post-Enlightenment mindset that embraces a Euro-Western superiority. This article will articulate Kuyper’s own writings and provide nuance in the positive and negative ways Kuyper thought has resulted in the oppression and liberation of South Africans, and also how Kuyper’s ideas have shaped the Christian Reformed Church of North America embracement of the Belhar Confession as a contemporary testimony since 2017.

Thought

Kuyper lived in Holland and was born post-Enlightenment. Kuyper lived during a period of great expansion in technology, economic growth, scientific discovery, and political power. On reflecting on the ecclesial life of the Church, Kuyper reflected that “Church life was cold and formal. Religion was almost dead. There was no Bible in the schools. There was no life in the nation.” As such, Kuyper sought to construct a worldview that affirms the European expansion and encourages Christians to participate in its development. Kuyper did not seek to make Christianity a “purely ‘personal’ matter… but Christ’s atoning work has profound implications for how we view Church, politics, science, and artistic endeavours.” Kuyper believed that Calvinism provides a universal proclamation of God’s sovereignty. Furthermore, it calls Christian “to obedience in every area of life, and the good news itself is not just for humankind but for all of creation.” Kuyper believed this extends to all people because worldviews are not for Christians only but for all people. Kuyper helped develop the idea of pillarization, “the idea that modern society should not erase difference but create distinct, meaningful space for difference.” The positive implications for polarization are that it welcomes differing worldviews. When implemented poorly, it has been used as a rallying cry for racial segregation and colonialism.

Apartheid

While Kuyper’s thinking clearly illustrates a pluralistic understanding of creation that affirms diversity, his own writings contain traces of racial superiority and a disdain for South African. Kuyper affirms pluralism and in the same voice, “affirms accounts of racial diversity that led to claims of inferiority.” A common belief that was used to support the Doctrine of Discovery is that Noah’s curse on Ham means that his descendants were destined to live as slaves to serve others; furthermore, they eventually populated Africa. Kuyper himself affirms this. He mentions Noah’s sons, “alluding to the tradition which has taught that Ham, who was cursed by his father, was the one whose offspring populated the African continent.” This mindset was quite normative in Kuyper’s time as it stemmed from the common views “of the Dutch who had settled in Southern Africa - he was closely in touch with them.” Kuyper’s racist views stem from a misconception of their ancestral heritage and is further exacerbated with his understanding of technological institutions.

Kuyper believes that every country that develops technologically ought to share its resources with others. Kuyper illustrates that a pitfall in many places in Asia is their failure to share their development with the rest of the world. As such, they have become an isolated echo chamber within a life system. Kuyper cites places like China for becoming an advanced system that has developed, yet since they have chosen not to share their system with the rest of humanity, they are seen as “an isolated lake… In all these regions, the people attained a high degree of development, but stopped there, and, remaining isolated, in no way proved a benefit to humanity at large.” Kuyper claims that this is more clearly explicit with Africa… “This applied more strongly still to the life of the colored races on the coast and in the interior of Africa - A far lower form of existence, reminding us not even of a lake but rather of pools and marshes.” Furthermore, Kuyper believed that different countries can benefit each other through racial mixing. Kuyper himself insisted that a global culture can only be the result of “the commingling of blood.” While this challenges the segregational structures of the Apartheid, he did not have a rightful view of the universal human dignity. When Kuyper wrote “The South African Crisis”, he provides a misnomer to intermarriage by claiming that “The Boers are not sentimental but men of practical genius. They understood that the Hottentots and the Bantus were an inferior race and that to put them on an equal footing with whites, in their families, in society, and in politics, would be simple folly.” While Kuyper affirms the intermarrying of different ethnicities, he does single out South Africans for being below western civilization. It is likely that Dutch settlers in South Africa used Kuyper’s ideas to support segregation. “Dutch settlers would establish the apartheid structures and the Dutch Reformed Theological system, which supported that regime, is often thought of as drawing on Kuyperian ideas.” During Kuyper’s time, the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa “decided to have seperate services for ‘colored’ members.”

Reaction

Retrospectively, Kuyper is lauded for revitalizing Calvinism after the Enlightenment; however, his views regarding South Africa are wholly disreputable. Many conclude that Kuyper’s language is blatantly racist. Yet, his worldview is liberating or simply believe he is “a man of his time.” Others affirm that his theology is “irredeemable, wholly interwoven with colonialism and racism.” While many believe that Kuyper’s own thinking was a product of his time, his notion of sphere sovereignty was also the liberative force that influenced Africa. Russel Botman claimed that Kuyper did contribute to the justifications for apartheid; however, he was also a source of “liberative influence on South Africa.” Similarly, Allan Boesak believed that Kuyper’s thought helped push against racial injustice. Boesak claims that common grace can provide grounds for recognizing the dignity of all persons from all ethnicities. “We believe passionately with Abraham Kuyper that there is not a single inch of life that does not fall under the lordship of Christ… Here, the Reformed tradition comes so close to the African idea of the wholeness of life that these two should combine to renew the thrust that was brought to Christian life by the followers of Calvin.” Furthermore, while Kuyper’s views were used to support apartheid, he certainly did not spearhead apartheid. “While it is true that Kuyper’s ideas were used as part of the theological basis for apartheid, this does not mean that Kuyper himself made the argument for rigid racial separateness in society.” Daniel Camacho writes that this understanding of equality can helpfully bring postures and actions that cultivate the human dignity of all persons. Camacho rightly affirms that common grace “affirms the goodness of all members of the human race and welcomes the fruits from their stewardship of the culture.” As such, readers of Kuyper can affirm and share his love for common grace and how it provides dignity to all of humanity and affirms stewardship, while critiquing and renouncing Kuyper’s missteps of racial superiority. While Kuyper’s views can be used to support institutional progress, the Reformed theologian, Richard Mouw, comments that Kuyper’s thinking on South Africa requires straightforward repudiation. Kuyper himself affirms that his views, let alone, everyone’s views are subject to fallibility. As such, his thought will be subject to filtering to recognize what ways Calvinism can continue growing and also prune to becoming a greater articulation of biblical truth.

“What the descendants of the old Dutch Calvinists as well as of the Pilgrim fathers have to do, is not to copy the past, as if Calvinism were a petrifaction, but to go back to the living root of the Calvinist plant, to clean and to water it, and so to cause it to bud and to blossom once more, now fully in accordance with our actual life in these modern times, and with the demands of the times to come.”

As such, Kuyper does not seem to indicate that we should treat his views as an orthodox view of Calvinism, but “it is far better for us to take his views and treat them in the manner he sought to treat Calvinism.” In this manner, we can filter out the problematic views of Kuyper while still recognizing the positive implications of his understanding of Calvinism.

Legacy

While Kuyper’s thought has exacerbated the racial segregation in Africa, the Church has prophetically outspoken against racism and has taken steps in action and thought to fight against prejudice. In 1950, J. Abrahamse sent a letter to 27 different Churches in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church to declare “that the apartheid policy was unchristian and therefore, must be rejected and not be applied in the Church nor in the rest of the country.” In 1982, the World Alliance of Reformed Church held their general assembly. During the discussion, Dr. Allan Boesak declared that “the promises of God for this world and for his church are in direct contradiction to apartheid ideals and practices.” The World Alliance of Reformed Church went further and declared that “the Churches who accepted and defended apartheid contradict in doctrine and action the promise which they profess to believe.” The Synod of 1982 concluded and declared that apartheid is a theological heresy.” Two ministers, Jaco Coetzee and A. B. Van Wyk, “proposed that the synod constitute an ad hoc commission to prepare a confession following the status confessionis against apartheid and to present it in the same synod.” This became the birth of the Belhar Confession. After it was constructed, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the Dutch Reformed Church of Africa “accepted the Confession of Belhar as their confession in 1994, when they united to form the URCSA.” While the URCSA encouraged the CRCNA to adopt the Belhar Confession, the Church decided that the Belhar Confession is a contemporary testimony. On Synod 2016, Classis Hackensack sent an Overture to Synod to “adopt the Belhar Confession as the Fourth Confession of the CRCNA.” While Synod lauded the Confession itself, Synod decided not to adopt the Belhar Confession as a confession because it is written against a specific contemporary issue, rather than presenting a summary of historical Christian doctrine. Furthermore, announcing the Belhar Confession as an ecumenical document would cause confusion between “ecumenical partners in the broader Reformed communities.” On Synod 2017, the Church “decided to place the Belhar Confession in the Category of contemporary testimony”, alongside Our World Belongs to God. Since the 1850s, the Church has spoken against the racism that brought segregation in South Africa and seeks to cultivate a space that welcomes all persons to worship together and respectfully acknowledge all persons as image-bearers who are deserving of dignity.

Bibliography

Adonis, Johannes Cornelius. “The History of the Belhar Confession.” In Belhar Confession: The Embracing Confession of Faith for Church and Society, edited by Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel and Leepo Modise. African Sun Media, 2017.

Bacote, Vincent. “Abraham Kuyper.” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, edited by Ian MacFarland. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

———. “Kuyper and Race” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, edited by Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra. Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022.

Boesak, Allan. Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition. New York: Orbis Press, 1984.

Botman, H. Russel.“Is Blood Thicker Than Justice? The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper for South Africa.” In Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper’s Legacy for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Luis Lugo. Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000.

Christian Reformed Church of North America. “History of the Belhar Confession.” Accessed April 24, 2026. https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/contemporary-testimony/confession-belhar/history-belhar-confession.

———. “Agenda for Synod 2016.” Accessed April 24, 2026. https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/2016_agenda.pdf.

———. “History of the Belhar Confession.” Accessed April 24, 2026. https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/contemporary-testimony/confession-belhar/history-belhar-confession.

———. “Summary of Decision of Synod 2016 for the Church.” https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/summary_of_synod_2016_to_churches.pdf.

———. “Summary Decision of Synod 2017 for the Church.” Accessed April 24, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/letter_re_summary_of_synod_2017_to_churches.pdf.

Cornelius, Adonis. “The History of the Belhar Confession.” In Belhar Confession: The Embracing Confession of Faith for Church and Society, edited by Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel and Leepo Modise. African Sun Media, 2017.

Joustra, Robert. “Introduction.” In Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, edited by Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra. Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022.

Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1931.

———. The South-African Crisis. Translated by A. E. Fletcher. London: REYUE DES DEUX MONDES, 1990.

Mouw, Richard. “Kuyper and Life Systems,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, edited by Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra. Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022.

Footnotes

Vincent Bacote, “Abraham Kuyper,” in The Cambridge Theological Dictionary, ed. Ian MacFarland (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 268.

Bacote, “Abraham Kuyper,” 268-9.

Agenda for Synod 2016, Christian Reformed Church of North America, accessed April 24, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/2016_agenda.pdf, 575.

Summary of Decision of Synod 2016 for the Church, Christian Reformed Church of North America, accessed April 24, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/summary_of_synod_2016_to_churches.pdf, 5.

“History of the Belhar Confession,” Christian Reformed Church, accessed April 24, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/contemporary-testimony/confession-belhar/history-belhar-confession.

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1931), iii.

Richard Mouw, “Kuyper and Life Systems,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022), 29.

Robert Joustra, “Introduction,” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022), 20-21.

Joustra, “Introduction,” 17.

Vincent Bacote, “Kuyper and Race” in Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper's Stone Lectures, ed. Jessica Joustra and Robert J. Joustra (Westmount: Intervarsity Press, 2022), 131.

Mouw, “Kuyper and Life Systems,” 32-33.

Mouw, “Kuyper and Life Systems,” 33.

Kuyper, Lectures, 32.

Kuyper, Lectures, 35.

Abraham Kuyper, The South-African Crisis, trans. A. E. Fletcher (London: REYUE DES DEUX MONDES, 1990) 24.

Mouw, “Kuyper and Life Systems,” 33.

Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” 130.

Russel H. Botman, “Is Blood Thicker Than Justice? The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper for South Africa,” in Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper’s Legacy for the Twenty-First Century, ed by Luis Lugo. Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000), 343.

Allan, Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition (New York: Orbis Press, 1984), 87.

Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” 135.

Kuyper, Lectures, 171.

Bacote, “Kuyper and Race”, 140.

Adonis Cornelius, “The History of the Belhar Confession,” in Belhar Confession: The Embracing Confession of Faith for Church and Society, ed. Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel and Leepo Modise (African Sun Media, 2017), 356.

Cornelius, “The History,” 356.

Cornelius, “The History,” 357.

Cornelius, “The History,” 357.

Cornelius, “The History,” 357.

Cornelius,, “The History,” 361.

Summary Decision of Synod 2017 for the Church, Christian Reformed Church of North America, accessed April 24, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/letter_re_summary_of_synod_2017_to_churches.pdf, 1.

Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” 130.

Bacote, “Kuyper and Race,” 141.