From Hagiography to Critical Biography: Sixteen Biographies of Abraham Kuyper

There are more than sixty independent publications about the life of Abraham Kuyper or aspects of it, not counting the even more numerous studies of his theology. Sixteen of these, in four languages, can be characterized to a greater or lesser extent as biographies. What requirements should a biography of Kuyper meet? And how do these sixteen measure up?

Only two of these biographies actually have the word “biography” in their title, those by Frank Vanden Berg from 1960 and Jeroen Koch from 2006. There is also a “pictorial biography” by Jan de Bruijn from 1987. The other thirteen use terms such as “life,” “life sketch,” or “life portrait,” but sometimes they use nothing more than the name of the person described to indicate the nature of the book. About half of them make no claim to be complete biographies, but all sixteen offer a description of Kuyper’s life and work, which is more than just a representation of his theology or his thought. In Kuyper’s case, after all, a biography must include both: a description of his personal life and of his published work.

What should a Kuyper biography look like? There is a sea of literature on the nature of biography, and from all these discussions it is possible to distill a few characteristics that ought to mark a book on Kuyper’s life and work. Of course, every life has its own themes and therefore requires its own approach.^[1] In Kuyper’s case there are at least five criteria. Let me briefly characterize them: (1) a complete life story, covering all aspects, from cradle to grave; (2) a hybrid form, something between literature and science; (3) a balance between an “objective” approach and sufficient empathy (anyone who dislikes Kuyper’s religious convictions should not attempt to write this biography, just as someone who hates pop music and the gay scene should not attempt a biography of Elton John); (4) an account based on the most complete use possible of the available sources, in Kuyper’s case the extensive Kuyper archive included; and (5), sufficient knowledge of the historical and local context: without understanding the background to Kuyper’s actions in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, neither his life nor his work can be understood.^[2]

Five Criteria for a Kuyper Biography

Let us first briefly consider each of these five criteria. One: a complete life story. In Kuyper’s case that means not only his entire life, from childhood to old age and from his family life to his public appearances, but also his written work. There are other considerations, too: studies of aspects of Kuyper’s published works, especially his theology, are abundant, much more so than those of his life. A biography cannot limit itself to work on his theology, however important that may be to many readers. Kuyper’s publications, including the many thousands of articles and 17,000 “three stars” (or “asterisms,” longer or shorter commentaries on the daily news published on the front pages) in his daily newspaper, cover many more themes than just the church and theology. Most studies focus on his political views alongside his academic work, but Kuyper also touched on many other subjects. In any case, one would expect a biography to cover not only his published works but also his daily life, as recorded in, for example, the 9,000 letters preserved in his archive.

Two: a hybrid form. In 1999, a time when much Western historiography was doing everything it could to be taken seriously as a science, preferably a social science, equipped with all the theory and methodology that seemed necessary, the leading Dutch biographer of his generation, Willem Otterspeer, dismissed this approach (Otterspeer 1999, 122–29). History will never get very far in this direction, he argued, because it can never deny its narrative nature without condemning itself to a completely sectarian and marginal existence. This applies especially to biography. “Biography as a scientific genre will never get beyond the sidelines. It is the backward nephew in an already not very bright family. Because science has no need for biography.” Practically all other views likewise emphasize the narrative character of biography, not only when the authors are literary writers but also when they are historians.

Since then historical science has once again learned to appreciate its own narrative character. What is now considered the historical method hardly differs from what was once called the “objective” method in journalism: weighing sources critically, checking and double-checking facts, and encompassing multiple perspectives, including those of opponents or other critical voices (Snel 2016, 38–40). In this sense biography can rely more than ever on the historical method, but even then its own literary character remains distinct. A scientific biography of Kuyper would require no less than ten volumes. A more literary biography must fit into a single volume by characterizing and generalizing and by letting characteristic examples and typical anecdotes tell the story.

A good biography is therefore a hybrid: both scientifically substantiated and written as a compelling story for the widest possible readership. In Otterspeer’s words: “Anyone who wants to write a biography must write. Not categorize and analyze, not summarize and describe; no, they must write. Sentences of torso and head, sentences of arms and legs, sentences of eyes and mouth—and then the biographer puts his style to work and breathes life into it.”

Three: empathy. The “objective” method that journalism once borrowed from science involved the critical handling of sources, ranging from verification to the use of multiple perspectives. In that sense a critical distance can also be expected from biography: the genre of “critical biography” exists for this purpose. Sometimes “critical” is interpreted as a license for undisguised criticism of the subject, but that is justifiable only in the case of criminals or warmongers. Better understood, a critical biography indicates a critical weighing of sources, including when they do not speak in favor of the subject.^[3]

So, while on the one hand critical distance is required, on the other hand a biography cannot do without empathy and at least some affinity with the subject. Sometimes this is a matter of relying on expertise: composers’ lives, for example, are usually written by musicologists, and those of sportsmen by sports journalists. Sometimes it is also a matter of the ideological leanings of the main character: those who despise them with every fiber of their being will ultimately have little to offer their readers; an anti-papist, for example, is not the ideal biographer of the Pope.

You expect a biography to provide what was known in nineteenth-century historiography as “verstehen” (understanding), which certainly does not have to result in the opposite: “verzeihen” (forgiving). A biography makes its subject understandable, no more and no less. The reader seeks insight and recognition, not distance and alienation. It goes without saying that this approach can still result in a critical biography and does not have to become hagiographic.

Four: to the sources! Making the most of the available sources is a natural part of the scientific idea and is traditionally known as the historical-critical approach. In Kuyper’s case this puts a big limit on the biographer. His archive is huge, with eighty-three archival boxes that take up almost thirty feet of shelf space. Although the entire archive has now been digitized and is available online, its sheer size remains daunting. Moreover, most of it is written in nineteenth-century Dutch and nineteenth-century handwriting. Add to that the incalculable stream of publications and articles produced by Kuyper himself, and the biographer’s problem becomes clear. To complete the picture it should be noted that already during Kuyper’s lifetime more was written about him than by him, and this stream has not dried up since his death.

Five: knowledge of the context. The nineteenth century was the era of liberalism and belief in progress, in the Netherlands and everywhere else in the Western world. But in the Netherlands there was also an ecclesiastical, political, and cultural struggle that was unique. In Kuyper’s case this is not the background to his biography but the foreground: no one else was as dominant a figure in all those movements and controversies as he was. Almost inevitably this favors the suitability of a historian to be Kuyper’s biographer, although theologians have also tried their hand at it. As yet no one has ventured to write from a literary standpoint about “De Geweldenaar” (the Titan), although his biographer George Puchinger liked to characterize him as an artist (Puchinger and Scheps 1971, 18, 38). In any case, a Kuyper biographer is expected to have a thorough knowledge of the context, and, as his biographer James Bratt has demonstrated, also of the international context, the development of Western thought in his time.

Biographies Written During Kuyper’s Lifetime

The sixteen titles selected for this paper are listed at the end and will be referred to throughout the text; I will therefore use only general references in the text.

The story begins with the lawyer Witius H. de Savornin Lohman (1864‒1932), who published a book in 1889 as part of a series of popular biographies of contemporary public figures. This Lohman was the son of Kuyper’s comrade Alexander de Savornin Lohman, long his main ally in politics and the church. Kuyper and Lohman senior would part ways in 1895, when a conflict over suffrage drove them apart politically, and the suspicion that the Reformed principles were not in good hands with Lohman also caused Kuyper to distance himself from the Free University. Lohman Junior was educated at the same Free University and subsequently became a professor of law there until the break in 1895, and was later a member of the Supreme Court.

The biography in question dates from before Kuyper’s break with the Lohman family and can therefore be seen as part of the anti-revolutionary movement (in distinction from Lohman’s emphasis on a “Christian-historical” approach). It describes the first three decades of Kuyper’s public life and does so in a factual and businesslike manner, based on Kuyper’s own publications. In October 1898, shortly after Kuyper’s Stone Lectures but still during his tour of America, an English translation of Lohman’s concise biography appeared in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review. For several decades it was the main source of information about Kuyper for an American audience. In Princeton the theologian Benjamin Warfield, who had written a short introduction to the translation, presented Kuyper with a copy during his stay there (Kuyper 1898).

The first real biography appeared at the end of the subject’s life, in late 1919. W. F. A. Winckel (1852‒1945) was a Reformed minister whose roots were in the Doleantie. For his biography of Kuyper he was still able to draw on oral history; in addition to people from Kuyper’s circle, he also interviewed Kuyper himself. Nevertheless, the biography came as a surprise to Kuyper, as evidenced by his review in an asterism in his newspaper on 3 November 1919, one of his last, written shortly after his eighty-second birthday. “Too early a biography” was the headline in De Standaard: Kuyper expressed his regret that Winckel had not contacted him before publication. As it was, especially regarding Kuyper’s youth in the opening paragraphs, error upon error had piled up: few of the dates and basic facts were correct.

That was a pity, Kuyper continued, because the book otherwise provides an accurate overview of his publicly known activities. However, one cannot call the book a biography because it is silent about the motives behind all of this activity (as explained in letters, for example). Kuyper was also positive about the author being a kindred spirit, which enabled him to “feel, see and understand Dr. Kuyper’s aspirations and intentions in such a moving way, and to sketch and explain them better than anyone else has done so far” (Kuyper 1919b).

Remarkably, Rev. Winckel focuses primarily on Kuyper’s political and public life rather than on his theology. For him Kuyper was a “statesman” and a “fighter for social justice,” not just a “scholar”—the word he chose instead of “theologian.” Winckel mentions in his foreword that the book was written at the request of the Amsterdam publisher Ten Have, who had asked him for a “popular description of the life and work” of Kuyper. Kuyper’s venomous arrows are therefore directed at the publisher: Ten Have should have approached him about the entire undertaking, Kuyper complained in an earlier asterism, written when he read about the forthcoming publication in an advertisement in his own newspaper, of all places. Then he could have helped to avoid mistakes (Kuyper 1919a).

Hungary and Germany

As early as 1914 and 1916, the Hungarian theologian Jenö Sebestyén (1884‒1950) had published about Kuyper.^[4] During his studies in Utrecht in 1907‒1910 with Kuyper’s disciple Hugo Visscher, he learned Dutch and become acquainted with Kuyper’s work. In 1913 he requested and received—by postcard, in German, and with the usual stipulation that Kuyper should get ten author’s copies—permission from Kuyper to translate the Stone Lectures into Hungarian.^[5] In the foreword, dated 1914, Sebestyén introduced Kuyper to his readers and briefly outlined his life, without citing his sources but apparently relying on Kuyper’s main publications (Sebestyén 1914).

The first non-Dutch biography appeared four years after Kuyper’s death in Germany. The fact that this book was soon to be translated into Hungarian says something about the interest that Sebestyén had meanwhile aroused in Kuyper.^[6] The author of this German work, the Reformed (reformierte) theologian Wilhelm Kolfhaus (1870‒1954), was to Germany what Sebestyén wanted to be to Hungary: Kuyper’s advocate. After Kuyper’s death he wrote that he had met him on several occasions, both in the Netherlands and in Germany. In around 1900 he had already translated several of Kuyper’s shorter works into German, while in 1904 a translation of the Stone Lectures—though not by him—had been published under the unfortunate title Reformation wider Revolution (Reformation against Revolution).^[7]

Kolfhaus himself had serious plans for a German translation of Kuyper’s Encyclopaedia, which would undoubtedly have given Kuyper’s reception in Germany greater impact.^[8] This did not happen, and, like Sebestyén, Kolfhaus remained a lone figure when it came to spreading Kuyper’s ideas—even though, as an active member of the international Reformed community, he had a large network, both in Germany and beyond. Other Kuyperians were also active in this international network, from Josef Bohatec (Vienna) to Auguste Lecerf (Paris) and indeed Jenö Sebestyén. Kolfhaus’s life’s work was to establish a connection for the German-speaking world between Kuyper and Karl Barth, the other “Neocalvinist” he admired—an endeavor that proved fruitless.

In 1924 the first version of his “Lebensbericht” (life story in the form of an extended obituary) about Kuyper was published. In his foreword he cites as his sources, in addition to Kuyper’s writings, the biography by Te Winckel, whom he had met personally during a visit to the Netherlands in 1923. The structure is also somewhat similar, although Kolfhaus mentions more public roles, namely those of minister, journalist and writer, politician, theologian and university founder, and finally Kuyper’s struggle for church reform. The foreword states that he aimed to write nothing more than a popular book; a biography can only be written in the future by a Dutch person who has access to Kuyper’s archive.

The book was a success and was published in large-volume print runs throughout the German-speaking world, including Austria and Switzerland. Kolfhaus received an honorary doctorate from the University of Münster and reached the peak of his academic career. In 1925 a somewhat expanded version was published, thanks to the response from his Dutch readers, according to the foreword, and there were plans for an English translation, which ultimately did not move forward. But alongside Te Winckel there was now a popular biography with a large and, moreover, an international reach.

Three Popular Approaches

One of the Dutchmen offering corrections and additions mentioned by Kolfhaus was Johan Coenraad Rullmann (1876‒1936). At the time of Kolfhaus’s biography this Reformed minister had published Volume 1 of his three-volume Kuyper-bibliografie (1923‒1940), which Kolfhaus had also used (Rullmann 1923). Considering his education at the Reformed Gymnasium in Amsterdam and his theological studies at the Free University, Rullmann could be considered the personification of the Dutch Neo-Calvinist world in the interwar period. He made a name for himself primarily as an amateur historian of that world: the Secession of 1834, the Doleantie of 1886, and thus Kuyper.

In Rullmann’s “levensschets” (life sketch) of 1928 we therefore find the third popular biography of Kuyper, after Te Winckel and Kolfhaus. As with both of them Rullmann’s intention is clear: to spread Kuyper’s ideas, even if the term “hagiography” is sometimes applied to his biography a little too easily. There is one difference, however: as a collector of sources par excellence, Rullmann, halfway through his work on his three-volume bibliography of Kuyper, clearly had more material at his disposal. But he included no notes, either, and many sources remain a matter of conjecture. He apparently did not yet have access to Kuyper’s archive, which in those years was managed and organized by Kuyper’s eldest daughter, Henriëtte.

A fourth biography of Kuyper dates from 1931 and formed part of a “The People’s Library” series, which also betrays its intention to appeal to a broad audience. The author was a professor at the law faculty of the Free University, Pieter (P. A.) Diepenhorst (1879‒1953), also the fourth Neocalvinist in the group. He too avoided the title “biography” and called his work a “character sketch,” apparently at the request of the publisher, although the book does cover Kuyper’s entire life. Once again Kuyper’s publications were the main source, alongside the three commemorative books dedicated to Kuyper at that time. Diepenhorst’s theme is above all that of Kuyper as a “fighter,” the architect of a movement. At the same time his intended audience was not necessarily Reformed; the emphasis was about Kuyper’s significance for Dutch society as a whole.

Another “concise portrait” (as the subtitle reads) followed in 1937. It was written by Jacob (J. K.) van Loon (1876‒1975), a journalist at De Standaard. Illness forced him to retire in 1933, although he would live to be ninety-eight and in 1970 would still reminisce about his last encounters with “His Excellency,” as he continued to call Kuyper (Van Loon 1970, 2). He was the man who had read every issue of De Standaard and was able to report that Kuyper had written more than 16,800 asterisms. An anthology of them, compiled anonymously by Van Loon, was published in 1932 (Van Loon 1932, xi). Equally modest was the “concise portrait” with which he contributed to Kuyper’s centenary celebrations in 1937. The “portrait” contains a number of personal observations by the author that contribute still more to our knowledge of Kuyper.

A Thesis

The first scholarly biography turned out to be composed by a Catholic, Piet (P. A.) Kasteel (1901‒2003). As a parliamentary journalist he worked for the Catholic daily newspaper De Maasbode, and with his biography of Kuyper he obtained a doctorate in political science from the (Catholic) University of Leuven in Belgium in 1938, the year after the Kuyper commemorations. During the German occupation (1940‒1945) he made a name for himself as a spy for the British secret services and, after crossing the North Sea, he worked for the Dutch government-in-exile.^[9]

Kasteel was the first to make extensive use of Kuyper’s own archive, which had since been opened up and was no longer managed by Henriëtte Kuyper, who had died in 1932. Kasteel’s knowledge of the sources, including those of Kuyper’s opponents, took his biography to a new level and is still very useful today. Ultimately, partly due to the time available, Kasteel limited himself to two public roles: those in the church and in politics. The study is therefore not necessarily a biography—Kasteel avoided that title—but rather an investigation into these two aspects of Kuyper’s public life. His private life mostly remains out of view.

At the same time the work confirmed the recognition Kuyper enjoyed around his centenary: that of a national figure of general significance, not of the outdated leader of merely the split-away Reformed people, an image that would arise in the Netherlands after World War II.

Without becoming hagiographic, it was mainly Kuyper’s merits that Kasteel broadly measured in no uncertain terms: “Our modern national life, which did not really begin until his adult years, bears the indelible mark of his lion’s claw. His overwhelming personality casts its giant shadow over our country throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He was a regenerating, organizing and reforming figure. Without him our churches, our science and scholarship, and our politics would be inexplicable. Our social and journalistic aspirations, our language, our entire cultural life have been shaped by the creative power of his original mind” (Kasteel 1938, 8).

Three Times North America

Following the Second World War three North Americans set the tone, although the first two were Dutch emigrants. The first of the three was also the first to use the term “biography.” That title is not unjustified, as Frank Vanden Berg’s 1960 book—the author died shortly after its publication—covers all aspects of Kuyper’s life in chronological order and shows a keen insight into the development of Dutch politics in Kuyper’s time. How Vanden Berg obtained his sources is a mystery; apparently the Calvin College library offered everything he needed. Vanden Berg (1884‒1960) wrote the book after his retirement; before that he had taught business courses in Grand Rapids. He had previously written several novels and children’s books.^[10]

At the same time it is the biography that has most often been called “hagiographic” and “uncritical”: it content is wholly devoted to defending Kuyper against his opponents, and this is repeatedly stated in clear terms. Vanden Berg had no scientific pretensions, and his sources are never accounted for. The book, an easily readable biography for Kuyper’s loyal followers in the United States and Canada, was republished, unchanged, eighteen years later by a new publisher located in Ontario—where Kuyperians were now more numerous than in the Netherlands.

The other Dutch emigrant was Louis Praamsma (1910‒1984). Immediately after the war, in 1945, he obtained his doctorate at the Free University with a thesis on Kuyper as a church historian, again an original study based primarily on new sources (published as Praamsma 1945). He too began his career as a Reformed minister, first in the Netherlands and from 1958 in the Christian Reformed Church in Canada, before becoming a professor of church history at Calvin Seminary.

His Let Christ Be King: Reflections on the Life and Times of Abraham Kuyper was published posthumously in 1985. As a historian Praamsma was a man of sources, above all of Kuyper’s writings but also of the secondary literature; all sources are fully accounted for in the notes. As the subtitle indicates, the book does not claim to be a biography. However, it does offer an insight into Kuyper’s entire life and work, and, much as in Vanden Berg, it does so from an open preference for Kuyper, albeit presenting him less as a lone warrior against countless enemies. The main title, however, indicates Praamsma’s primary intention: Let Christ Be King—words that would never have been raised as a slogan in the Netherlands around the critical Kuyper Year of 1987; the title resonated only in North America.

The third North American biography appeared fifteen years later. This time it was by a native American who did not speak Dutch: James Edward McGoldrick (1936‒2021), a historian at four universities in Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, and South Carolina and the author of numerous books on the history of Protestantism (cf. Greenville News 2022). In his foreword McGoldrick mentions the lack of a Kuyper biography for the English-speaking world since VandenBerg and Praamsma had long been out of print; both these books, however, do play an important role in his own. He therefore had no access to other literature and sources beyond those in English.

A characteristic feature of the work is a short introduction pointing out the shortcomings, from McGoldrick’s perspective, in Kuyper’s theology, dealing particularly with Kuyper’s perspectives on common grace, infant baptism, and regeneration (palingenesis), which presumably were “at odds with Reformed theology” (McGoldrick 2000, 13).The main theme of the book was Kuyper’s theology, with McGoldrick’s theological verdict repeated at appropriate moments. Whereas all earlier biographies emphasize other aspects of Kuyper’s public life, above all his political activities, the emphasis now lies on Kuyper as the father of Neocalvinist theology, a theme on which most conferences on Kuyper have since focused. Eighty years after his death Kuyper has thus become a leading theologian, a position he had held during his lifetime only at a small university in Amsterdam.

The Kuyper Year 1987

In the Netherlands the Kuyper Year 1987 had passed without a new Kuyper biography, except for one heroic attempt. At the Free University in Amsterdam the head of the Historical Documentation Centre for Dutch Protestantism (1800 to the present)—as the HDC was still called; nowadays it is the HDC Centre for Religious History—had worked his way up to become the Kuyper expert par excellence. The Reformed historian George Puchinger (1921‒1999) was the custodian of the Kuyper archive, now preserved in the cellars of the university, and had dug up more from it than anyone else before or after him.

For the sesquicentennial Puchinger ventured into the first part of what was to become a biography in no less than six to eight volumes. As a result, the opening volume, titled “The Young Kuyper,” covers only the years 1837 to 1867, and the narrative really begins only when Kuyper falls in love with Jo Schaay in Rotterdam in 1858, generating a correspondence consisting of hundreds of letters—the main source for Puchinger.

The result was a much sharper picture of Kuyper as a student, ambitious and demanding, not the least of his fiancée. At the same time it remained no more than this first volume, and around the year 2000 it was surpassed in parts by the meticulous archival work of the historian Jasper Vree, who managed to uncover more information than ever before. Thus, soon after Puchinger’s death the image of the young Kuyper was to be significantly revised again by this groundbreaking work, compiled in 2006 in Kuyper in de kiem (“Kuyper in the making”) (Vree 2006). Above all Puchinger remained the man who was able to characterize Kuyper sharply on certain occasions, primarily in lectures and interviews.^[11] Unfortunately, the intimate knowledge he had of Kuyper’s life and work found only limited reflection in his books.

Nevertheless, a second title appeared in 1987, this one containing the word “biography” in the title. It was Abraham Kuyper: leven en werk in beeld. Een beeldbiografie (Abraham Kuyper: His Life and Work in Images. A Pictorial Biography) by Jan de Bruijn (b. 1948), Puchinger’s right-hand man, who had succeeded him as head of the HDC in 1986. The book is structured around hundreds of photographs and other illustrations—all in black and white—of Kuyper’s life, drawn from much more than just the Kuyper archive. In a sense the “pictorial biography” was the first biography to focus entirely on Kuyper’s life, as opposed to his theology. The captions accompanying the illustrations often deal with subjects that had never been highlighted before. This author included in these captions passages from Kuyper’s letters, such as those to his family, which had not been used before, either.

The book was republished in 2008 in a hard cover edition by a different publisher, improved and this time with many color images and illustrations. The title also had more punch: Abraham Kuyper: A Pictorial Biography. For a first introduction to the colorful life of the main character, the book is unsurpassed, and it is no coincidence that it was also the first Dutch biography to be translated into English. In 2014 an equally beautiful hardcover edition was published in Grand Rapids, also in color wherever possible and with explanations tailored to a non-Dutch audience.

Koch and Bratt

Meanwhile, the most important Dutch biography to date had been published, though it has never been translated. The Germanist Jeroen Koch (b. 1962) began his research in 1998 at the request of the Dr. Abraham Kuyper Fund, which wanted a new biography written by an outsider but supervised by a distinguished committee. In 2006 this resulted in a thoroughly researched biography, the most comprehensive to date.

The response in historical circles was considerable, but the reception was mixed. Professional historians praised the thorough craftsmanship, the depth, and the writing style. Koch’s portrayal of Kuyper’s unstoppable political rise also aroused admiration. Criticism came mainly from Protestant circles, where Koch’s lack of familiarity with the church and Christianity was noted. The opinion of a leading early modern historian, Arie van Deursen, caused an uproar. His otherwise balanced review was headlined “Kuyper in the language of a libertine pamphlet” and argued that Koch lacked knowledge of and empathy for the Reformed world and had therefore failed (Van Deursen 2006).

Twenty years later Koch’s biography remains the most thorough to date, although three limitations remain apparent that prevent it from becoming the “definitive” biography. To begin with, Koch had stipulated to his supervisory committee that he be allowed to leave the large Kuyper archive untouched, because it gave him “nightmares” (Snel 2006, 37–38). The biography is therefore mainly based on secondary literature and, of course, on Kuyper’s own publications. As a result, Kuyper’s everyday life is not part of the picture; it has become a book of ideas, an “intellectual biography,” in the words of the author.

A second limitation has been mentioned less often. A recurring theme in the book is what the British historian Herbert Butterfield labelled the “Whig interpretation of history”—the idea that all Western freedom and progress is due to the liberal tradition (Butterfield 1931). Koch believes that it was Kuyper’s opponents who forced him towards democracy and pluralism, as well as to his commitment to social injustice, for example. Kuyper did not embody Koch’s own form of modernity, nor did Koch recognize that Kuyper, as an emancipator of the Reformed people, was of greater significance than just to his own supporters. Kuyper therefore did not have, in Koch’s mind, the national greatness that Kasteel had seen in him in 1938.

The third limitation has already been mentioned: reviewers cited dozens of instances in which the author revealed his own (secular) beliefs and his bewilderment at what he called “religion” or “the typically superfluous phraseology of the Bible.”^[12] Along with Kuyper’s American biographer Vanden Berg, Koch is outspoken about his own, albeit rather opposite, religious position.

The other “major” Kuyper biography appeared in the United States in 2013, when the historian James Bratt (b. 1949) published a groundbreaking analysis of Kuyper’s thinking in the context of his time and from an international perspective (Bratt 2013). Compared to all its predecessors, Bratt’s work is the superlative of an “intellectual biography,” a tour de force. Bratt took George Puchinger’s personal advice to heart: “First you will love the man, then you will detest him, finally you will understand him. Then you are ready to write” (cf. Bratt 2013, xxii). His own preparation consisted of a decade-long study of Kuyper’s writings, during which he learned to read Dutch. One of the results was the publication in 1998 of Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, a compilation and translation of sixteen of Kuyper’s most important texts, at that time the most complete edition in English (Bratt 1998).

In his Introduction to Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, James Bratt shares with the reader that in his view “Abraham Kuyper was a great man but not a nice one” (Bratt 2013, xxii). Nevertheless, this observation did not prevent him from convincingly walking in Kuyper’s shoes in order to make him understandable from the inside. Unlike his predecessor Koch, Bratt identifies himself as a “fellow Calvinist.” He has clearly read Koch, but his biography does not explicitly relate to it; Bratt tells his own story.

His approach is therefore different from the outset: Kuyper, he says, was “first and foremost a modern project,” and throughout the book he traces Kuyper’s significance in relation to his modern contemporaries, often internationally. This horizon is considerably broader than Dutch historians have dared to explore until now. However, the book largely confines itself to Kuyper as a thinker; it is silent about his everyday life, even more so than is Koch’s work. This approach was in line with the North American perception of Kuyper as a theologian, which had only grown in the meantime—his historical significance for Dutch politics and society was understandably less relevant for readers in the English-speaking world. Readers on Goodreads therefore enthusiastically welcomed “The definitive biography of Abraham Kuyper, giant of Dutch Calvinism.”

At the same time Bratt irrevocably positioned himself in the ideological field of force that had also arisen around Kuyper in the U.S. Whereas Dutch reviewers such as the Groningen historian Arie Molendijk openly expressed their preference for Koch’s biography, which they considered more meritorious from a “critical outsider” point of view (Molendijk 2014), the American reception of Kuyper was now permeated by the “conservative/liberal” dichotomy, with a majority claiming Kuyper for the former camp.

Bratt’s assertion in the introduction that Kuyper belonged above all to his own time and not exclusively to either of the two current camps did not prevent reviewers from believing that Bratt would have understood Kuyper’s contradictions better without his own “left-of-center” point of view.^[13] Like Koch, in other words, Bratt was considered in some circles to have a predisposition that now seemed inevitable: the neutral ground that Piet Kasteel was still able to tread in 1938 was now definitively a thing of the past.

Two Recent Titles

The following decade produced two fresh titles. First, in the Kuyper Year 2020, in which Koch’s biography was also republished (albeit virtually unchanged), there was a new “portrait.” The Seven Lives of Abraham Kuyper was a by-product of my research into Kuyper’s role in journalism, built up from the wealth of new biographical material I found in mostly unknown sources (see Snel 2020, 2024, and forthcoming). My book describes seven roles that Kuyper named for himself in a self-portrait in 1912, the first of which proved to be the most surprising: the more than three decades that Kuyper was active every summer as an Alpinist. Not a single paragraph had ever been written about Kuyper’s mountaineering, but now that story forms a complete opening chapter.

The rest of Seven Lives also often explores new ground, enriched with unknown anecdotes and intended for a wide readership. The fifth, completely revised and expanded edition of 2024 formed the basis for translations into English, Korean, Chinese, and Indonesian. After a cardiac arrest and sixteen months of rehabilitation in 2021 and 2022, I had my dissertation published in 2023. At the suggestion of the publisher I inserted the word “biography” in the subtitle: Abraham Kuyper: A Life in Journalism. An Alternative Biography. It describes not only Kuyper’s life as a journalist but also his theoretical reflections on the new profession and his role in the international journalism movement, a hitherto forgotten chapter in Kuyper’s life (Snel 2023).

The South Korean theologian Sung-Kuh Chung (b. 1942), professor at Chongshin, Daesin, and Calvin universities, and president of the first two, as well as founder of the Calvin Society and Calvinism Research Institute in South Korea, surprised everyone in 2021 with a biography of Kuyper. According to his own statement—in the conclusion—it is the first Korean study of Kuyper’s life. Based mainly on English and Dutch literature—the Rev. Dr. Chung also studied at the Free University and apparently found everything he needed in the library of Calvin University in Grand Rapids—the book covers numerous different aspects of Kuyper’s life and work in twenty-two chapters. The subtitle refers to a “theologian, politician and Calvinist journalist.”

This biography was apparently first written in English but not published in that language; it has only appeared in French and German translations. In line with the growing international interest in Kuyper in recent decades, the focus is on Kuyper’s theology: the second half of the monograph, eleven chapters long, is reserved for this aspect. To the extent that Chung makes critical notes, they concern Kuyper’s theological views, which are measured against what is considered normative Reformed.

Conclusion

Since 1889 biographical studies of Abraham Kuyper’s life and work have mainly been undertaken by theologians and historians: seven times by a theologian, five times by a historian, and twice by jurists (Lohman and Diepenhorst) and journalists (Van Loon and Snel). Overall, unsurprisingly, the theologians have focused more on Kuyper’s theological oeuvre, while the others have focused on his political activities. Language plays an important role: only four biographers were not Dutch or Dutch emigrants, and three of those four also read Dutch. McGoldrick (2000) is the only one who relied entirely on English-language literature; the other fifteen use mainly Dutch sources.

A complete life story, covering both Kuyper’s life and works, is rarer than studies focusing on his theology. And even the biographies still cannot compete with Jan de Bruijn’s “pictorial biography,” which truly shows his concrete life. Apart from De Bruijn only Kasteel, Puchinger, and Snel have drawn on the Kuyper archive, which is an almost inevitable prerequisite for this genre.

As for the literary qualities of the biographies, they are debatable. But in any case both Koch and Bratt, whose respective efforts are in many respects the most substantial, have clearly made an effort in that direction.

Most of the authors reflect an affinity with Kuyper’s ideas—half of them in my estimation even to an excessive degree—while only Koch expresses his distance from them. Knowledge of the historical context is also widely available, although only Bratt is a specialist who is also able to interpret Kuyper’s place among his contemporaries in an international context. All in all, Kuyper’s complete biography can therefore only be found in a combination of at least a couple of titles, as none of the sixteen alone meets all the criteria. That leaves enough room for each subsequent generation to re-examine the life and work of Abraham Kuyper.

In the present heyday of biography as a genre, there are more opportunities than ever before, thanks also to the growth of technical means and access to sources. “We live,” observes the British biographer Nigel Hamilton, “—at least in the Western world—in a golden age for biography. The depiction of real lives in every medium from print to film, from radio to television and the Internet, is more popular than ever. More people are undertaking biographies… than ever before” (2008, 1). Hopefully, this also applies to Abraham Kuyper.

Titles Discussed, in Chronological Order

• Witius H. de Savornin Lohman. Dr. A. Kuyper. Mannen van Beteekenis in onze dagen. Levensschetsen en portretten, bijeengebracht door Dr. E. D. Pijzel. Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink, 1889. 72 pp. Translated as “Dr. A. Kuyper,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 36 (October 1898): 561‒609.

• W. F. A. Winckel. Leven en arbeid van Dr. A. Kuyper. Amsterdam: Ten Have, [1919]. 332 pp.

• Wilhelm Kolfhaus. Dr. Abraham Kuyper 1837‒1920. Ein Lebensbericht. Elberfeld, Westphalia: Buchhandlung des Erziehungs-Vereins Chr. Buyer, 1924. 226 pp. Zweite erweiterte Auflage [second, enlarged edition], 1925. 240 pp.

• J. C. Rullmann. Abraham Kuyper. Een levensschets. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1928. 264 pp.

• P. A. Diepenhorst. Dr. A. Kuyper. Een karakterschets. Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn, 1931. 240 pp.

• J. K. van Loon. Dr. A. Kuyper, geleidelijk geleid. Een beknopt levensbeeld. Amsterdam: De Standaard, 1937. 84 pp.

• Piet Kasteel. Abraham Kuyper. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1938. 354 pp.

• Frank Vanden Berg. Abraham Kuyper; a biography. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1960. 208 pp. Republished by Paideia Press, St. Catharines, ON, 1978. 282 pp.

• Louis Praamsma. Let Christ Be King: Reflections on the Life and Times of Abraham Kuyper. Jordan Station, ON: Paideia Press, 1985. 196 pp.

• George Puchinger, Abraham Kuyper. De jonge Kuyper (1837‒1867). Franeker: T. Wever, 1987. 276 pp.

• Jan de Bruijn. Abraham Kuyper. Leven en werk in beeld. Een beeldbiografie. Amsterdam: Passage, 1987. 356 pp. Reprint: Abraham Kuyper. Een beeldbiografie. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008. 400 pp.

• James Edward McGoldrick God’s Renaissance Man: The Life and Work of Abraham Kuyper. Darlington and Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000. 320 pp.

• Jeroen Koch. Abraham Kuyper. Een biografie. Amsterdam: Boom, 2006. 672 pp. Reissued, with minor alterations, by Amsterdam: Boom, 2020. 676 pp.

• James D. Bratt. Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2013. 456 pp.

• Jan de Bruijn. Abraham Kuyper. A Pictorial Biography. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. 418 pp.

• Johan Snel. De zeven levens van Abraham Kuyper. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2020. 400 pp. Fifth, completely revised and expanded edition: Amersfoort: De Vuurbaak, 2024. 440 pp. Translated as The Seven Lives of Abraham Kuyper: A Portrait (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2026; forthcoming). Korean, Indonesian and Chinese translations also forthcoming.

• Sung-Kuh Chung. Abraham Kuyper. Sa vie et sa théologie. Un théologien, un homme politique, et un journaliste calviniste. Traduit de l’anglais par Dr. Marc Choi. Kindle ed., 2021. 270 pp. German translation: Abraham Kuyper. Sein Leben und seine Theologie. Calvinistischer Theologe, Politiker, Journalist. Wuppertal, Westphalia: Foedus, 2021. 324 pp.