The Limits of Worldviewist Tranformationalism

Westminster Theological Seminary’s church historian Carl Trueman appreciates D. G. Hart’s reflections on the social horsepower of Christians, Neo-Calvinism, and famed theologian Abraham Kuyper. For those who don’t know, Kuyper was a leader in the Dutch Reformed Church (later leading a denominational split and uniting with other bodies to form the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands), a newspaper editor, and highly successful politician. His crowning achievement as statesman was serving as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.

While this may all seem distant biography, his theopolitical ideas are not. He once said, “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'” Not a single part of the human mind is kept from God’s transformational power–our whole outlook on the cosmos (worldview) before Christian regeneration is off. Likewise, the world is broken by sin, but God is at work in His sovereignty regardless.

Christians are invited into this endeavor to change art, the physical landscape, and every other possible area of human existence to conform to the aformentioned Christian worldview. In fact, if you use the term “worldview” on a regular basis and exercise the concept regularly to understand your surroundings, you are probably employing at least a derivative of Kuyper’s thought. And if you hadn’t noticed, “worldviewism” is the lingua franca of American evangelicalism.

The widespread popularity of worldview talk makes Trueman’s blog post most interesting. The historian observes,

DG’s critique at Old Life of the bombastic claims about transformationism is akin to one I have made frequently in the classroom about talk of the [singular] ‘Christian worldview’: such things are, by and large, code for the expression of the concerns of the middle class chatterati in a blandly Christian idiom.  As far as I know, for example, no conferences on the transformation of Christian toilet cleaning or turkey rendering have yet been successfully organised.

This is where DG’s history of Calvinism is interesting. I was struck by his account of Abraham Kuyper. Here was a (probable) genius and (definite) workaholic who had at his personal disposal a university, a newspaper and a denomination, and also held the highest political office in his land. We might also throw in to the mix that he did this at a time when European culture was far more sympathetic to broadly Christian concerns than that of the USA today. And Kuyper failed to effect any lasting transformation of society. Just visit Amsterdam today, if you can bear the pornographic filth even in those areas where the lights are not all red.

While I know there are pious Christians still at work in Holland, the point stands: hardly a century has passed, and the country already has a reputation of vice and immorality.

Turning to the present day, Trueman notices that current pastors, planters, theologians, and other Christians who traffic in the terms of Kuyper lack the Dutchman’s lavish resources. Are we kidding ourselves when we dream of transforming our society according the “Christian worldview,” which looks an awful lot like white middle-class American Protestantism?

Trueman concludes,

Surely it is time to become realistic. It is time to drop the cultural elitism that poses as significant Christian transformation of culture but only really panders to nothing more than middle class tastes and hobbies. It is time to look again at the New Testament’s teaching on the church as a sojourning people where here we have no lasting home.

Evangelicals have built great parachurch edifices upon the foundation of Kuyperian thought. Trueman and Hart’s hangups should provide at least some thoughtful pause about the fruits, benefits, and aims of such organizations.