Pope Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper

Second Quarter 2001

by Mark A. Noll

Another conference held in 1998, commemorated the work of both Abraham Kuyper and Pope Leo XIII. The latter's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, is considered the starting point of modern Catholic social teaching. Wheaton College history professor, Mark Noll, was among two dozen speakers at the event, which was cosponsored by Calvin Theological Seminary and the Acton Institute, both of which are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan where the conference was held. A forthcoming book, now under preparation by the Acton Institute, will contain the conference papers. The following excerpts are drawn from Noll's essay.—Ed.

There are good reasons why, by at least one count, there were more centennial celebrations around the world in 1991 for Rerum Novarum than there were bicentennial celebrations in 1989 for the French Revolution. There are also very good reasons to explain why, if at the end of the twentieth century there exists an intellectual revival among evangelical Protestants, it is substantially because of Kuyper's inspiration as mediated through several generations of faithful American Kuyperians. A brief summary will show why their teaching still recommends itself, both to the West in which they lived as well as to the furthest reach of the globe where the church now reaches.

1. Kuyper and Leo shared an eagerness to treat subjects like labor, class, poverty, wealth, and the nature of the state as first-order theological issues. Too often in the twentieth century, Christian believers have failed to live up to that standard.

2. Leo and Kuyper shared an eagerness, not only for theologizing about "the social question" [the phrase that identified the new kinds of poverty and social dislocation associated with the Industrial Revolution], but also for bringing the weight of sturdy theological traditions into that study. For Leo, it was the vigorous Thomism he had done so much to promote earlier in his pontificate. For Kuyper it was the great themes of Calvinism as he understood them at the end of the Dutch nineteenth century. The Thomistic and the Calvinistic inheritances did not yield identical, or even compatible, social-political conclusions. But they yielded sturdy positions with gravitas that could be acted upon, debated, and strengthened.

3. Kuyper and Leo shared an ability to promote piety along with social understanding. The fact that Leo published Octobri mense, an encyclical on the Rosary, only four months after Rerum Novarum, and that Kuyper regularly wrote devotional columns for his newspapers throughout his long political career suggests that neither teacher separated life into artificially closed compartments.

4. Leo and Kuyper shared a belief that, in order to promote a healthy society, it was necessary for the church to play a large role. Of course, their ecclesiologies were not the same, and so they differed on the exact tasks that the church should perform. But they were united in believing that the church as a visible manifestation of Christ on earth had a social business to take care of.

5. Kuyper and Leo shared a concern for the range of human institutions between the level of the state and the level of the individual, and also a belief that these institutions were ordained by God and could be exploited for both the glory of God and the good of humanity. Leo's defense of workingmen's associations sparked a flurry of such institutions around the world. Throughout the twentieth century doughty bands of Kuyperians have persisted in the quixotic-looking effort to form labor unions.

6. Leo and Kuyper shared a rejection of the notion of an omnicompetent state, but they also recognized a positive place for state action under certain conditions. Suffice it to say that neither of them promoted extremism of the Right or the Left, which meant that neither held the Christian faith hostage in the way that so many "culture Christians" have so often done over the course of the twentieth century, and by no means only in Germany's Third Reich.

7. Kuyper and Leo shared a genuine concern for the working poor. This is where their responses to "the social question" began, and this is where their legacy to future generations continues. The ironies in Christian attention to the poor have been noted many times, especially the irony that sees the Christian faith act successfully to boost its adherents out of poverty only to have these same ones, or their middle- and upper-class descendants, forget the poor.

8. As a last commonality, Leo and Kuyper shared a commitment to the Christian observance of Sunday as a source of social well-being as well as of Christian devotion. Many twentieth-century Christians, even those with strong sabbatarian traditions, have forgotten this reality.