Talk:Abraham Kuyper

Kuyper's Racism

Let's get over it people -- even a sympathetic Reformed/Calvinist and African American scholar like Vince Bacote openly refers to Kuyper as a racist. It is not "original research" or spurious in any way to see Kuyper's racism in the primary sources. It is not a consistent or elaborated race ideology; it is sometimes contradictory, ranging from a paternalistic view of even the most primitive africans (in Kuyper's view) benefiting and "developing" from mixture with whites to a straight-up racist view of "miscegenation" (any perceived interracial mixing) as a bad thing when it comes to the white Boers and black South Africans.

Here is the last edited state I find perfectly valid but User:StAnselm keeps reverting for the small changes at the end. Note this is after several uncontested paragraphs detailing Kuyper's central role in South African white nationalism and apartheid:

Kuyper's legacy includes a granddaughter, Johtje Vos, who is noted for having sheltered many Jews in her home in the Netherlands from the Nazis. After World War II she moved to New York. Conversely, Kuyper's son Professor H. H. Kuyper, a supporter of Afrikaner Nationalism and colour racism was a wartime Nazi collaborator, and his grandson joined the Waffen SS and died on the Russian front. There is no basis for associating Abraham Kuyper himself with Nazism or Nazi racial ideology per se, but his own position was that there are inferior (non-white) races. The question of whether it was good or bad for whites to mix with them was one he answered differently, at different times. As Saul Dubow notes, Kuyper praises "the commingling of blood" as "the physical basis for all higher development" in the Stone Lectures, a paternalistic view at best, albeit one that can be used to oppose racist ideas of miscegenation. Elsewhere Dubow notes Kuyper is decidedly racist, as in The South African Crisis where he describes "the Hottentots and the Bantus" as "an inferior race" and speaks in favor of the Boers avoiding "mixed liaisons."

This ending simply corrects the previous ending which disassociates Kuyper from Nazi racism, which is not relevant and nowhere suggested. I've made that clearer now, while also indicating the more pertinent question of Kuyper's own type of racism is one of contradiction, or that it covers a range from paternalistic "soft" racism -- where he could approve whites mixing with black Africans ("Hottentotts"/Bushmen and Bantus) that he considered deeply inferior (as this benefits the blacks and thus everyone, in Kuyper's view) -- to outright rejection of this same idea. On this particular issue of interracial sex (marriage really was *not* the issue) greater context could be added by noting that widespread international criticism of the Boers at that time had a lot to say about rape and abuse that had produced a substantial "mixed-race" population. Stephen Crane wrote a piece about it that can be found in Wheaton's Christian Classics library online. Just search for "Hottentot" in the CCEL and you will find a great deal of material from Kuyper and others reflecting 19th century Christian (but not especially Christlike) thoughts about this group of people maligned as the lowest on the planet. 67.22.194.101 (talk) 05:58, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Please do not edit war. It's great that you've started a discussion here, but you have added the contentious material back into the article, even though consensus has not yet been achieved. StAnselm (talk) 06:29, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

You have said "Elsewhere Dubow notes Kuyper is decidedly racist, as in The South African Crisis", but you haven't cited Dubow - you cited Kuyper. We would need support the statement that Dubow says Kuyper is racist. StAnselm (talk) 06:32, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

That sentence starting "Elsewhere..." quotes and refers to the same Dubow citation in the previous sentence. I'll clarify this and add more supporting academic sources, but you have deleted primary source references where Kuyper is plainly racist. There is no issue of this being "contentious." He said and wrote flatly racist things. The only "edit war" is resulting from your attempts to omit this. 67.22.194.101 (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Here you go:

Dubow notes Kuyper is decidedly racist in other writings, such as The South African Crisis where he describes "the Hottentots and the Bantus" as "an inferior race" and speaks in favor of the Boers avoiding "mixed liaisons."

And primary material from the Stone Lectures where Kuyper is describing his Fichtean Calvinism as an alternative to Darwinism where national election replaces natural selection:

“To put it concretely, if you were a plant, you would rather be rose than mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider;…and, again, being man,…of the Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir.” -Calvinism: Six Stone Foundation Lectures (Grand Rapids, MI, 1943), 96–97.

How would you like to work in this material regarding the desirability of being an Aryan rather than a black African? 67.22.194.101 (talk) 20:42, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back with a revised statement. We have to be very careful about our use of primary sources - see WP:PRIMARY. I looked up Debow, and he doesn't say what you're saying - he doesn't use the phrase "decidedly racist". In fact, quite the opposite - he notes that "Kuyper's views are themselves contradictory and can be used to sustain opposing viewpoints." One, of the tensions, I think, is that often Kuyper is talking about the superiority of Christian culture, rather than a particular race - that is, the Dutch are superior to the Bantu because they have received the benefits of Christianity. Anyway, I will insert the South African Crisis reference into the article. Anselm (talk) 21:31, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that this idea -- that Christianity confers a cultural superiority -- is not a form of deep nationalistic, theo-political bigotry and tantamount to racism in a context where white overwhelmingly are defined as "Christian" and blacks are not? 67.22.206.238 (talk) 14:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I did not put quotation marks around "decidedly racist." What do you think Dubow is saying when he quotes Kuyper opposing sex between blacks and whites in one book and making a general endorsement of "mixing of the blood" in another? Yes they are contradictory, because one statement is decidedly racist and the other eugenicist from a white supremacist perspective. It is good for groups to mix because it uplifts the "inferior" ones --- still a racist set of foundational assumptions.

Here is Mark Noll on this issue, which makes some good points but dodges the outright white supremacist remarks in Kuyper's own writings that I've quoted above:

"For Kuyperians, principialism became dangerous when it was exported to Africa and entangled with race. During his Stone Lectures, Kuyper himself spoke about the desirability, as he put it, "of the mingling of blood," (14) but also during his American trip, as Peter Heslam has shown, Kuyper spoke a great deal about essential affinities between Calvinism and Dutch national character, about how in 1898 the United States was joining a long, Dutch tradition of battling the Spanish, about his pride that "two men of Dutch blood" were contending for governorship of New York in that fall's election, and about the essential Calvinist leaven that had made both Holland and the United States singularly blessed. (15) Such archly romantic organicism was relatively harmless in Kuyper's Dutch context, but I follow the writings of Irving Hexham and Andre du Toit in concluding that it became malignant when transported to South Africa. (16) According to these scholars, there was no Calvinist ideology of Afrikaner nationalism before the Dopper minister (Reformed Church or Gereformeerde Kerk) S. J. du Toit imported Kuyper's principal reasoning and his notions of sphere sovereignty in the 1870s and 1880s. Kuyper should not be blamed for applications of his thought for which he did not approve. But his great stress on principle--his ferocious determination always to reason, as he put it in 1891, by first taking up "the general ideas that give shape and color to our entire conception of life" (64)--bore evil fruit when certain Kuyperians concluded that a verzuiling (or pillarization) of race could be built upon Kuyper's principial reasoning about the sovereignty of spheres. The point that Kuyper, as a believer in the Incarnation, unduly neglected was that context sometimes should be allowed to sway principle." -A century of Christian social teaching: the legacy of Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper. Journal of Markets & Morality (2002) 5:1. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Journal-Markets-Morality/186436738.html

Also instructive, Theo Plantinga's reflections on the shift from sympathy for Afrikaner reformational philosophers/neocalvinists to rejection of their development and defense of apartheid based on Kuyper and his followers: http://www.plantinga.ca/m/MDL.HTM#pinnock33 I think the upshot from Noll and Plantinga is that they don't want to say Kuyper was a racist and prefer to circumlocute about his remarks on blood and nationality (but not "hottentotts" and "kaffirs") while still admitting that these ideas centrally enabled the most thoroughgoing racist regime and most successful theo-political racism in the modern era. Noll and Plantinga are of course biased sources, since they identify intellectually (and by upbringing, family and culture in Plantinga's case) with Kuyper and the ensuing Kuyperian tradition, which is integral to their own identities and careers. So when they wrestle with Kuyper's racism, it's understandable (but dishonest and not excusable) that they soft-pedal it and evade issues of culpability and harm, but you cannot look at what Kuyper literally says in the Stone Lectures and The South African Crisis re. "higher development," "inferior race," and Bantus, Hottentots, Kaffirs and conclude he did not espouse a racist and eugenicist theory as central to his Calvinist worldview, which is what the Stone Lectures are all about. (The terms Hottentott and Kaffir are racist appellations, by the way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_(racial_term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoikhoi) If Noll used his cancer metaphor properly, he would say Kuyper had malignant ideas that metastasized in South Africa. It is actually a bigger issue than that however, since Barth attacked racism and the broader European Protestant volksnationalist theo-politics with its enshrining of race and blood as a creational structure that could be used to authorize "God is on our side" nationalistic warfare, racial separatist and supremacist ideas. This is part of the history of Barth being rejected by Kuyperians, Neo Calvinists, Van Til and the broader segments of American Protestantism they influenced.

67.22.194.101 (talk) 21:52, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Also of note:

From the high-lands of Asia our human race came down in groups, and these in turn have been divided into races and nations; and in entire conformity to the prophetic blessing of Noah the children of Shem and of Japheth have been the sole bearers of the development of the race. No impulse for any higher life has ever gone forth from the third group. -Kuyper, Calvinism (1874)

67.22.207.123 (talk) 18:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

If you search online you will also come across contemporary race ideologists appropriating Kuyper and quite content to quote him as self-evidently in their camp. E.g. http://faithandheritage.com/2014/10/presentation-christianity-and-race/

References

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The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Abraham Kuyper/CommentsTalk:Abraham Kuyper/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This article has a commendable amount of detail and is in general in pretty good shape. It might well be worth putting up as a Good Article candidate if a couple of improvements were made. It needs citations (one per paragraph is a good rule) and it needs a thorough copyedit. There are quite a few places where it lacks needed apostrophes or commas, has extra commas, or has small typos. MLilburne 08:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Last edited at 08:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 06:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Surname

Is there any evidence that his surname was originally "Kuijper"? When I looked at the Dutch wiki page on him, the only name I saw was "Kuyper" Academicoffee71 (talk) 16:24, 14 September 2017 (UTC)