Unbelief and Revolution

Unbelief and Revolution

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

Edited and Translated by Harry Van Dyke

Lexham Press

Bellingham, WA

Unbelief and Revolution

Copyright 2018 Harry Van Dyke

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

This book is a revised edition of Groen van Prinsterer’s Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution, published by Wedge Publishing Foundation, Jordan Station, Ontario, Canada, 1989, pages 293–539.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. Public domain.

Print ISBN 9781683592280

Digital ISBN 9781683592297

Cover Art: Jean-Pierre Houël, The Storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789, 1789. Public domain.

Lexham Editorial Team: Danielle Thevenaz and Todd Hains

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer on the occasion of the completion of his Handbook of Dutch History, some months after he had concluded his lectures on Unbelief and Revolution, fall 1846.

Contents

Translator’s Introduction

Preface

Preface to the Second Edition

Lecture I | Introduction

Lecture II | The Wisdom of the Ages

Lecture III | Anti-Revolutionary Principles

Lecture IV | Historic Forms of Government

Lecture V | Abuses

Lecture VI | The Perversion of Constitutional Law

Lecture VII | The Reformation

Lecture VIII | Unbelief

Lecture IX | Unbelief (Continued)

Lecture X | The Conflict with Nature and Law

Lecture XI | First Phase: Preparation (till 1789)

Lecture XII | Second Phase: Development (1789–94)

Lecture XIII | The Reign of Terror

Lecture XIV | Overview: 1794–1845

Lecture XV | Conclusion

Works Cited

Names Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Translator’s Introduction

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s famous book Unbelief and Revolution is a classic work in public theology, first published over one hundred and fifty years ago. It is a manifesto of a prescient Christian statesman and has become an enduring statement of Christian political thought. A mature work, here offered in an abridged English translation, Unbelief and Revolution functioned as a tract for the times and marked its author as an astute critic of the spirit of the age.

The central message of the book is that the French Revolution is not actually over but lives on in its ideas, and these ideas are dangerous for society. The book makes a compelling case for challenging the permanent revolution in which Western civilization has engaged since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Our culture, according to Groen, is increasingly in the grip of an intellectual and spiritual revolution that has put secular humanism in the saddle and repeatedly wreaks havoc with the created order for humanity and society. Because this revolution has continued almost unabated to this day, the book’s message has only increased in relevance for the twenty-first century.

THE AUTHOR

Willem Groen van Prinsterer (1801–1876) was a Dutch historian and statesman. His official Christian name, Guillaume, was given to him at his baptism in the fashionable French-speaking Walloon Church of The Hague.¹ Dr. Groen—the double surname is usually shortened to the first part—made an indelible mark on the society and culture of the Netherlands. He is known as the father of the anti-revolutionary movement in his native country as well as a fearless commentator on politics in and out of parliament.

By his own admission Willem Groen grew up a lukewarm, if not nominal, Christian, but by the age of thirty-three he accepted the historic Christian faith. That decision was providentially prepared by the sermons of court chaplain (and later church historian) Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné (1794–1872) and by the gentle influence of his pious wife Elisabeth van der Hoop (1807–1879) as well as friends in The Hague and Amsterdam who belonged to the revival movement of the time known throughout Europe as the Réveil. In later life Groen described himself as "an offspring of Calvin and a child of the Réveil."

Young Groen had an auspicious beginning. An eager student, his mother made French his mother tongue and father made sure he mastered the native Dutch. Wim, as he was known in his youth, grew up in an aristocratic milieu and was given a classical education. By age 22 he completed a brilliant course of studies at Leiden Academy, where he earned two doctorates, one in law and one in letters, giving his public oral defense of both dissertations on the same day.

After a perfunctory few years as a barrister—which he enjoyed very much as it gave him time for historical study—he served King William I (1772–1843; reigned 1813–1840) as cabinet secretary in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This rather artificial kingdom was a union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium which the Allied Powers—England, Prussia, Austria and Russia—created to keep France in check after they had defeated Napoleon.

In his role at the court, Groen was a close observer of the political tensions that exploded in the Belgian Revolt of 1830. He analyzed and assessed this traumatic event with great clarity and candor in a series of privately published pamphlets which he entitled Nederlandsche Gedachten (Netherlandic Reflections). The experience made him decide to study the recurring revolutions of his time.

Not long after the Allies recognized Belgian independence, Groen resigned from the cabinet and was appointed supervisor of the archives of the House of Orange. In this capacity he would over the years edit and publish fourteen volumes of correspondence by members of that royal house. When the first of these volumes came out some members of polite society censured him for publishing all letters in full, without omitting passages that were less flattering to the writer. Groen defended his editorial policy and in a separate publication stressed the importance of pursuing historical science impartially on the basis of unrestricted access to truthful and reliable primary sources.² In this he was a pioneer in his country and earned the name father of modern Dutch historiography.

In addition to these historical publications Groen spent nearly a decade studying the roots and driving force of the French Revolution of 1789. The shadow of the French Revolution fell over Groen’s generation as the Holocaust does ours.³ In the Groen Collection in the National Archives in The Hague are found several hefty folders containing notes, extracts, and summaries in French and Dutch testifying to many years of thorough study in a great variety of sources. These materials were destined to become the preliminary drafts for a more definitive composition. By the fall of 1845 Groen felt confident enough about his understanding of this earthshaking event and its undiminished influence up to his own time that he invited a score of friends and close acquaintances, twenty-one in all, to come to his house on Saturday evenings to hear him lecture on the results of his findings. (Holding lectures to a select audience in the privacy of one’s home was not uncommon at the time.) Out of these evening sessions were born the fifteen lectures, published virtually unchanged in 1847 with the title Ongeloof en Revolutie (Unbelief and Revolution). The book turned into a diagnosis of his time and laid down basic principles for conduct in an age infected with a complex set of beliefs and assumptions, an ideology which Groen captured under the single term the Revolution.

The completion of this work marked a significant reorientation in Groen’s career. Having formulated his basic worldview and stance in life, he stepped out of this time of study into public life. As a man of independent means, he owned and edited a daily newspaper and for five years was its chief editor. For several terms he held a seat in the lower house of parliament, where he participated in the debates on many issues, notably freedom of education, the relation between church and state, and provincial and municipal autonomy. In his above-mentioned pamphlets entitled Netherlandic Reflections, published between 1829 and 1832, he debated the current issues of the day; later in his career he resumed his trenchant commentaries in a second series of pamphlets under the same title; these installments were published intermittently and then bound in five volumes between 1869 and 1876, the year of his death.

Groen rejected the choice between conservative and liberal, striking out for a third way. (At this time in Europe, conservatism favored paternalistic, interventionist government, while liberalism stood for free enterprise.) He considered conservatism, to which many of his Christian friends belonged, to be out of step with what was gaining strength in society, referring to conservatives as hand-wringing onlookers of the Revolution. At the same time, he insisted that liberals, moderate or progressive, were cautious but convinced proponents of the Revolution, while more radical groups like socialists were simply more consistent liberals or liberals in a hurry.

Throughout his career he defended the rights of parliament and aided in the country’s development toward a genuinely constitutional monarchy. He scorned census democracy—the liberal policy that favored the middle classes by limiting the franchise to the higher taxpayers. He often made himself the spokesman of the disenfranchised people behind the voters, many of whom he knew held deep sympathy and affection for him. In both his personal life and his parliamentary conduct he showed concern for the working classes and stood up for their right to better treatment in what was then still a highly stratified society entering the seamy stages of early capitalism and exploitive labor practices.

His prominence as a leading spokesman for gospel-inspired social reforms enhanced his reputation abroad. At one time a delegation of abolitionists from Britain came to The Hague to plead with Mr. Groen that he might be Holland’s Wilberforce.⁴ Another time Groen and his Réveil circle were visited by Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845), who came to solicit his support for a European-wide campaign for prison reform.⁵

CONTEXT

When the Ongeloof en Revolutie lectures were given, in the mid-1840s, Groen’s native land was recovering from the secession of Belgium. In the double chamber of 1840, convened to adjust the Constitution to the new situation, Groen, the Christian-historical reformist, sparred with Leiden law professor Johan Rudolf Thorbecke (1798–1872), informal leader of the growing number of progressive liberals. The Netherlands was passing through the twilight years of the Restoration period while increasing political dissent announced inevitable change. It was becoming clear: conservatism had spent itself and liberalism stood poised to assume leadership. The ruling class had shored up an autocratic monarch, an enlightened despot whose benign centralist administration sought to foster economic prosperity but also unity, concord and public tranquility through religious uniformity. This last aim had led to severe measures against religious dissenters such as the Seceders of 1834.⁶ The measures were defended by Thorbecke but condemned by Groen as being out of place in traditionally tolerant Holland under a descendant of William of Orange (1533–1584), the sixteenth-century champion of freedom of religion and conscience against the Spanish Inquisition. Meanwhile, voices clamoring for a thorough, more modern revision of the Constitution, offering greater political involvement for the rising middle classes, were frustrated by official dawdling or outright dismissal. They would not be satisfied until the end of the decade. The 1840s were a period of political crisis with little prospect of resolution. This mood of uncertainty and frustration is reflected in both the opening and closing lectures of Unbelief and Revolution.

The same lectures complain about the listlessness of the period. The intellectual climate was stifling, given to complacency in thought and sentimentalism in the arts. Strongly held beliefs were kept at bay as symptomatic of uncultured enthusiasm: a moderate middle course in everything was deemed safest. A brand of Christian Platonism taught in the University of Utrecht pleased many among the educated elite, as did the Groningen school of theology which spurned the rigor of Dutch Calvinism and preferred a gentler, more cultured version of Christianity.⁷ The influence of the Groningen divines is reflected in a number of polemical comments in Lecture VII that deals with the Protestant Reformation.

As for the economic conditions of the day, times were tough. The carrying and transit trade that had sustained the Dutch Republic had not regained former levels: shipping business at the ports of Antwerp, London and Hamburg now outstripped Amsterdam. Shipping via the Rhine to the hinterland was rivaled by new railway links in Germany and Belgium. On top of that, the international recession of the 1840s affected Holland gravely. The value of colonial holdings fell below 1795 levels, and were accompanied by a slump in the shipbuilding industry. The manufacturing industry was still in its infancy and the supporting infrastructure was outmoded, still relying largely on stage coach, tow-barge, and the footpath. Canal construction had begun in earnest, but railroads were slow in coming. Half of the country’s workforce still made a living in the agricultural sector, which made only modest gains.

At the same time, social conditions presented anything but a rosy picture. The working classes in town and country lived on subsistence wages and led a harsh existence. Close to a quarter of the population at this time lived off public relief. Indirect taxes on all necessaries did little to help the plight of the thousands upon thousands who lived on the fringe of society. Philanthropy was the pride of the middle and upper classes but the shame of the lower classes. The unemployed could join the throngs of beggars or else slink away into their humble homes and slowly starve. The situation reached its lowest point during the notorious potato famine in the mid-forties. Malnutrition was rife: the potato was the staple, bread rare, and meat too dear. Housing was often substandard. Many families lived in abject poverty.

Did this picture, as summarized by Groen in the opening lecture, perhaps suffer from exaggeration? Recent research has shown that long-term economic trends of the period indicated modest but steady improvement.⁸ However, that was not visible to contemporaries. Small wonder that Lecture I claimed that a general decline in material prosperity was unmistakable.

If all these factors prompted Groen to paint a dismal picture of his times, when it came to the sphere of religion his concern rose even higher, offset only by his grateful recognition of the European-wide evangelical revival that had been at work in the Netherlands since 1820. The Réveil emphasized that outward observance of the faith and church attendance as a social custom were dangerous for the soul, and that instead a vibrant faith had to be based on earnest study of the Scriptures and a personal relation to Christ. Moral conduct was a fruit, not a condition of salvation, and works of mercy and benevolence were a Christian’s privilege, not his burden. As the revival grew in the major urban centers, foreign missions, inner-city missions, campaigns for prison reform and the abolition of slavery were taken in hand.

But what worried Groen about the state of religion in his country was the creedal indifference in the national church and the attempt by her leaders to steer toward a broad church that increasingly condoned confessional laxity if not outright rationalist interpretations of Scripture and suppression of the gospel of free grace.⁹ He and a number of gentlemen friends petitioned synods to reverse the trend, but to no avail. At the same time they showed care for the upcoming generation and worked hard to overcome official reluctance to grant charters to faith-based day schools. The harassment of dissenters in 1834 and following was painted by Groen as symptomatic of the illiberal intolerance of liberalism. What spirit was responsible for all these woeful developments?

BASIC THESIS

Of Groen van Prinsterer’s prodigious oeuvre, his most characteristic and influential work is Unbelief and Revolution: A Series of Lectures in History, published in 1847. This book seeks to demonstrate that the malaise of his country and of Western Europe in general was caused by the intellectual and spiritual revolution that had taken hold of the mind of modern people and continued in various forms to guide society and politics in an unwholesome and ultimately destructive direction. Thus the term revolution here does not refer to the overthrow of a government but to the comprehensive paradigm shift in the intellectual and spiritual outlook of Western civilization. Groen’s detailed treatment of the French Revolution of 1789 is explained by his contention that this dramatic series of events illustrated for the first time on a large scale what can happen when a revolution of this kind is put into practice in a concrete, real-life political experiment. His account stands out by its inner coherence and consistency as he analyzes both the source and the course of the French Revolution and its aftermath, pointing out its unique character in comparison with all previous political and social upheavals in the history of modern times.

Groen was strongly influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke (1730–1797) and the works of French detractors of the French Revolution such as Louis de Bonald (1754–1840), Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821), and Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854). He came to see the Belgian Revolt as a convulsion of the same liberal ideology that had inspired the French Revolution of 1789. Delving deep into the nature of this ideology, Groen developed his theory that these revolutions were not merely political upheavals but were rooted in a comprehensive worldview to which people were attached with a kind of religious devotion that colored everything they thought, said, and acted out.

Unbelief and Revolution is a critical overview of the preceding century and a half, a period that saw the birth of modernity under the auspices of secular humanism. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment project of human emancipation, Groen writes, may have had many laudable goals, but from the outset it went astray when it replaced divine revelation with unaided human reason. Historically speaking, the Enlightenment was essentially a proclamation by Western civilization of human autonomy and independence. It launched the Age of Reason and Revolution, the birth of a public philosophy that Groen calls the Revolution. This revolution stands for an approach to public affairs that is dominated by religious indifference if not hostility. Thus it marks a break with the past that culminates in defiance and denial of God’s revealed will in his Word and his works. What Groen captures with the term Revolution has since come to be called modernity, the culture of secular humanism in which religious faith is banished to the private sphere and replaced by a form of ultimate commitment to a pseudo-religion, one which Groen in Lecture VIII calls the religion of unbelief.

The new spirit invading culture, once it emerged around 1680 and set the tone after 1750, caused a radical break with Western civilization thus far and turned its fundamental values on their head. It substituted all transcendent orientation with self-chosen, inner-worldly standards. Thus it based its public philosophy on four pillars: convention, consent, coercion, and consensus. Convention: society, its structures and institutions, can be shaped any way men choose. Consent: authority, to be valid, must have the approval of those under it. Coercion: law and justice are decided by those who are in power. Consensus: truth is determined by the public opinion of the day. These four errors came to replace the fourfold foundation of an anti-revolutionary approach to life and society: a given order anchored in the creation; the limited but valid rights of a diversity of offices; objective standards of justice rooted in the righteousness of a holy God; and truth that is independent of human beings and ultimately derives from divine revelation. The Revolution’s substitutions amounted to a radical change in men’s mind and outlook, and once put into practice they would mean nothing less than an overturning of Western civilization and an overthrow of Christian principles, morals and values.

With this analysis Groen put his finger on the monumental shift to the paradigm that we have come to know as secular humanism. This religiously-tinged worldview has dominated Western culture far into the twentieth century. In many ways it is with us still. What has made Groen’s analysis of such enduring value is that he showed how the inner logic of modernity would eventually lead to the full-blown skepticism and relativism that we see today in post-modernity.

In an uncanny anticipation of 1848, known in European history as the Year of Revolution, Unbelief and Revolution predicted that unless the European peoples re-embraced the transcendent norms taught in the Christian religion, the Continent would experience new revolutions culminating in new reigns of terror and would in fact enter the permanent revolution. Accordingly, Groen’s book has been called prophetic. It was published one year before the Communist Manifesto and three years before Karl Marx (1818–1883) spoke in a letter of the permanent revolution. Groen’s x-ray examination of the spirit behind the French Revolution anticipated, in advance as it were, the nature of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the Nazi revolution of 1933, each with its own reign of terror. At the fifth general assembly of the Evangelical Alliance, held in 1867 in Amsterdam, Groen gave an impromptu speech in which he warned: Should [modern] nationalism ever triumph, we will see the atrocities of a new barbarism amid the most exquisite refinements of civilization. Thus he stands out as a farsighted commentator on his age.

PLAN OF THE BOOK

Unbelief and Revolution has a well-considered structure. It consists of fifteen lectures or chapters. After the first two introductory lectures, the next three form the negative part of Groen’s thesis: why the French Revolution can be attributed neither to the prevailing principles (III), nor to the established forms of government (IV), nor yet to the undeniable abuses (V) of the ancien régime. These oft-cited causal factors, either singly or in combination, are insufficient, according to Groen, to explain a revolution of this magnitude and depth.

The next four lectures, VI to IX, form the positive demonstration of Groen’s case: how long-term underlying causes explain the Revolution. First, the Revolution was prepared, beginning with early modern times, by a new, contract theory of government (Lecture VI). At the same time, the Protestant Reformation proved unable to stem the tide of the increasing breakdown of the historic faith and acted only as a temporary suspension of the growing unbelief (Lecture VII). Lecture VIII then argues how the forces of apostasy within the Christian religion and the rise of unbelief in the form of rationalism replaced respect for the authority of the Bible: unbelief became the new source to inform humanity’s beliefs and ethics. Similarly, Lecture IX lays out how unbelief in the form of human autonomy replaced divine sovereignty and became the new basis of state and society. In short, unbelief replaced revelation with reason and justice with expedience. Increasingly, truth became a matter of consensus, its claims considered valid only if rationally based and widely held. And conduct was more and more governed by convenience, by whatever is expedient and people-pleasing.

With Lecture X the author prepares his audience for the transition to a consideration of the Revolution’s factual history. It sets forth how the revolutionary theory, when put into practice, can only operate in constant collision with the divine world-order as this asserts and reasserts itself in the very nature of things—in the undeniable requirements of human life and the irrepressible needs of human society. This explains why Groen, ironically, supports the story of such clashes with many quotations from works by authors who are actually sympathetic to the Revolution, in order to show that even they cannot get around the facts. One cannot argue with history.

The remaining lectures are devoted to the historical account of how the Revolution operated in actual practice. This history went through five phases: those of preparation (XI) and development (XII and XIII), followed by phases of reaction, renewed experimentation, and despondent resignation (XIV).

The closing Lecture XV describes how the Revolution affected international relations by installing power politics. The lecture ends in an exhortation to be faithful at one’s post, to not ignore but engage the questions of the day, and to witness to a Christian approach to public affairs.

Of the fifteen lectures, Lectures VIII to X are key. Here the author analyzes the Revolution as an ideology, both in its spiritual consequences and its social and political ramifications. In this penetrating analysis Lecture X functions in a pivotal way. Situated between the revolutionary theory in the abstract and the concrete facts of its implementation in history, it argues that on the one hand the ideas of the Revolution undeniably derive their power to shape history from a deep-seated conviction, yet on the other hand clearly prove to be impracticable when they are embraced and experimented with: again and again the attempts at implementing it is countered by the superior force of the unchanging order of creation, the immutable laws, as Groen puts it, which the Maker and Sustainer of all things prescribes for his creatures and subjects. This friction, this clash at the very core of public life, asserts Groen, explains the seemingly intractable problems that society has had to struggle with ever since.

The author’s Preface informs the reader of the two grounds for his reading of this history. It stands written! That is, Holy Scripture is the guide that helps us judge what happens in the world. It has come to pass! That is, history confirms that God rules and that the design for his creation cannot be undone and will prevail in the end.

Groen protests in 1846 that it does not help for the enemies of Christian society to claim that they merely stand for religious neutrality and a clean separation of church and state. Those are nothing but euphemisms for atheism in the public square, for godlessness throughout human affairs beyond the strictly personal and private. Thus Groen calls for resistance to the Revolution across the board—in whatever form and in whatever area it turns up and seeks to give shape to things. In positive terms Groen champions the notion that the input of the Christian religion must not be debarred from public life but should rather be invited and welcomed to help deal with the affairs of state and society, with the challenges in education and the academy, and so on.

GOD’S HAND IN HISTORY

In his book, Groen the political theorist and analyst is at the same time the historian—more precisely, the Christian historian who professes belief in the ruling and overruling providence of God. How does he deal with the perennial question of the active presence of God in history? For instance, is the hand of God visible in the history of the Revolution up to his own time?

Most assuredly it is, Groen believes. But not directly. The closest he comes to that traditional Christian reading of history occurs when he suggests that growing decadence seemed to have made the generation of 1789 ripe for the judgments of God (Lecture V), and that the great suffering inflicted on the nobles by the Revolution was perhaps an indication of the gravity of their guilt and the justice of divine retribution (Lecture XII). However, statements of this kind are expressed only in passing, are limited to half a dozen, and are all cautious and tentative. The overriding link that Groen sees between God’s hand in history and the history of the Revolution is indirect—mediated by the order of creation instituted and upheld by God. Those who flout that order—who embrace a rival gospel and propel society on a path toward a fancied utopia—are destined to experience woes of every description: bitter conflict and desperate resistance, tension and disruption, collision and devastation. The ideology of the Revolution, so Lecture IX concludes, is not free to run its natural course [but] faces insurmountable obstacles that arise from man’s constitution and needs, from the nature of things, and from the ordinances of God. In this way God teaches the children of men to learn from their rebellion, to retrace their steps, and to fall in line again with his intentions for how human life is meant to be lived.

RECEPTION

The book Unbelief and Revolution has never been out of print and has seen twelve reprints, the last in 2008. Nevertheless, it has been controversial from the day it appeared. Leading Dutch historians, although they recognized the impact it was destined to have, distanced themselves from it insofar as it aspired to be a historical work.

Robert Fruin (1823–1899) called it superficial as well as unscholarly for its copious references to the Bible. Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) qualified the work as born of wrath and alarm. Pieter Geyl (1886–1966) dismissed it as one grand mistake. Other historians, like Frederik Carel Gerretson (1884–1958), Hendrik Smitskamp (1907–1970), Jacob Kamphuis (1921–2011) and Arie van Deursen (1931–2011), came to Groen’s defense, affirming the basic thesis of his book.

Nevertheless, criticism of certain aspects of the work have never been absent from either quarter. In reliance on a scholar like K. L. von Haller, Groen depicts monarchy as a king’s personal affair rather than a public trust (an error that he corrects only partially in the second edition after coming to know the political philosophy of Friedrich Julius Stahl). He persists in using the language of logic when discussing the dynamics of ideology. Terminologically he fails to distinguish between physical causality and historical causality. He pays insufficient attention to contributing factors and secondary developments, such as the economic. In places he indulges in some gratuitous barbs against the papacy. The philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977), although he honored Groen as the intellectual father of the Christian-historical school of political theory, nevertheless deplored the reliance of Groen’s thesis on historical development more than on the structures embedded in the very order of creation.¹⁰ The social philosopher Henk Woldring (b. 1943) wrote a book about the challenge of the French Revolution for today in which he characterized Groen’s interpretation as neglectful of socio-economic processes.¹¹

For all that, Groen’s contemporaries and brothers in the faith took his message to heart. His bosom friend Aeneas baron Mackay (1806–1876) wrote him: "The Word applied to politics was new to me, but now that I have placed that candle in the darkness I see sorry things, but I see." The poet-theologian Nicolaas Beets (1813–1903) found Unbelief and Revolution captivating and reported that he could not put it down and yesterday afternoon closed it with a prayer on my lips.… Your book makes it clear to me: the nations are walking in ways where no return is likely, no halt avails, and progress is the increasing manifestation of the man of sin. When young Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) received a complimentary copy of the second edition, he wrote the aged author who had become his friend: You have given me a photograph of your mind. Kuyper would shape his entire public career fighting the Revolution as defined by his mentor.

The book’s enduring significance is brought out in the fact that in its country of origin it inspired widespread resistance to the spirit of modernity. It gave birth to what came to be called an anti-revolutionary movement that laid the groundwork for a multi-faceted engagement of public life by orthodox Christians who refused to capitulate to a public philosophy that would banish religious convictions to the strictly private sphere and that rules all appeals to divine law out of order. The uncompromising message of Groen’s book draws a sharp dividing line between a secular and a Christian approach to the many issues facing society and culture. It depicts two rival worldviews locked in mortal combat. It has inspired generations to look for practical alternatives that could be a match for the prevailing philosophy of the day and for the new organizations and institutions that modern industrializing society called into being.

Because Groen was not a conservative who clung to the past, he was able to recognize the French Revolution as a destructive but cleansing storm. Its lofty ideas—liberty, equality, fraternity—are worth pursuing, he argued, but only on a Christian basis and in a Christian spirit. For many years Groen invited the conservatives in his country to be his allies and join him in his anti-revolution—we would say, in his anti-secularism campaign. However, when they hesitated or shrank back he stopped those efforts and turned resolutely in a more progressive direction, adopting the slogan In our isolation lies our strength, by which he meant that by not compromising but sticking to their starting principles he and his sympathizers would leave their identity intact and keep their bearings in the midst of the debates about the problems that needed to be addressed.¹²

Toward the end of his life he was gratified to see a younger generation organize his mission into a more disciplined movement. Three years after his death saw the formal founding of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP). The ARP would play a disproportionate role in parliament and government for more than a century, serving as a first line of defense against the onslaught of secularism. It stood for Christian policies such as freedom of conscience, social justice, help for the needy and the vulnerable in society, and a colonial administration geared to indigenous development, not profits. Though never a majority, the party always held seats in the Dutch parliament between 1880 and 1980 and regularly contributed cabinet ministers as well as seven prime ministers at the head of coalition governments. It helped remove discriminating policies against faith communities and promoted a pluralist society of mutual tolerance and accommodation. The story of this party unrolls in a fascinating manner in the brilliant career of Groen’s disciple and successor, the churchman-publicist-scholar Abraham