Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Religious Liberty as Divine Gift
The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Religious Liberty as Divine Gift
Jul 8, 2025 4:17 AM

As persecution intensifies around the world, and as the incremental fight for religious liberty only begins here in America, Christians have an obligation to better understand the role of religious liberty and how it intersects with God’s design for political institutions.

Unfortunately, as a recent video from John MacArthur demonstrates, the confusion is more widespreadthan I’d like to believe.

“We can’t expect religious liberty to exist as some kind of divine right, as some gift from God,” he says. “…We were never promised religious liberty. We were only promised persecution.”

MacArthur goes on to paint a confusing and convoluted picture of the Christian’s role in government, arguing that, when es to the erosion of religious liberty here in America, it simply “doesn’t matter” because “our political conditions have nothing to do with the advancement of the kingdom of God.”“We don’t fight for quote-unquote ‘religious liberty,’” he says. “We might talk about it. We might vote to make it happen. We don’t fight for that.”

MacArthur is right to remind us of Jesus’ promise of persecution, just as he’s right to remind us of somebasic distinctions between currentpolitical conditions and the everlasting Kingdom of God. But in doing so, he falls prey to the typical temptations and false dichotomies ofcultural fortification and the subsequent withdrawal.

The reality of persecution needn’t mean that we treat religious liberty as some superficial perk ina humanistic political order, available and desirable only for fortability and personal pleasure.As with any other corner of creation, God has a design for government, and adhering to thatdesign is good for all of creation.

It is the Christian’s role to fight for the advancement of God’s Kingdom, but this includes the fight for a government that aligns with the powers God gave it. Religious liberty is at the heart of that struggle, representing the most basicof all freedoms. When es tothereligion we choose,God holds the authority, not the government, and we shouldn’t be afraid to connect the dots from the there.

In Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, Abraham Kuyper describes “freedom of conscience” as “a boundary that the state may never cross,” reminding us that “the limits to state power reside in the will of God” and “government has as much power as God has assigned to it. No more; no less.”

Indeed, for Kuyper, government is but one of many power centers of culture, and as such, Christians should be attentive that it only uses the power God assigned to it, lest the state serve as a steamroller acrosseveryday life:

The various entities — human persons first of all — which God called into being by his creative powers and to which he apportioned power, are almost all, in whole or in part, of a moral nature. There is a distinctive life of science; a distinctive life of art; a distinctive life of the church; a distinctive life of the family; a distinctive life of town or village; a distinctive life of agriculture; a distinctive life of industry; a distinctive life merce; a distinctive life of works of mercy; and the list goes on.

Now then, next to and alongside all these entities and ever so many other organizations stands the institution of the state. Not above them, but alongside them. For each of these organizations possesses “sphere-sovereignty,” that is to say, derives the power at its disposal, not as a grant from the state but as a direct gift from God.

Fathers have power over their children, not as a gift from the state but by the grace of God. The only right the state has at most is to codify the right that fathers have received from God and, should a father want to injure the rights that God has also given to the child, to restore the situation as God has intended it.

Christians should strive for a state that rightly relates to its citizens, and this is certainly of importanceto those interested in the “advancement of the Kingdom of God.” Assigning the state to its proper place will bear fruit in any number of areas — personal, social, economic, political, or otherwise.

As Kuyper concludes, when es toreligious liberty and freedom of conscience, those fruits most certainly stretch before and beyond the mundane matter of earthly governance:

Conscience is the most intimate expression of the life of a human being. Conscience knows that it has received its power directly from God. Conscience revolts against every unjust verdict that ends a dispute. Conscience will not badger government whenever it acts as the owner of a field of which it is only the temporary caretaker.

These excellent traits derive from the fact that conscience is the immediate contact in a person’s soul of God’s holy presence, from moment to moment.

Withdrawn into the citadel of his conscience, a person knows that God’s omnipotence stands guard for him at the gate.

In his conscience he is therefore unassailable.

If government nevertheless dares to push through its “abuse of force,” the end will be a martyr’s death. And in that death government is beaten and conscience triumphs.

Conscience is therefore the shield of the human person, the root of all civil liberties, the source of a nation’s happiness.

If our goal is to rightly relate across all of God’s created order, with each organization, institution, and individual fulfilling its God-given, God-glorifying task, any sweeping violations of the conscience — whether on families, businesses, schools, or churches — ought to be approachedforwhat they are.

As future battles unfold, let us be a church that fights on all fronts,serving ascitizens whose “energy breaks out in all directions.” Let us fight not out of regret over personal lossesina humanistic order,but inpursuit ofwhat is good and “out of respect for what is holy.”

Aswe fulfill our God-given tasks and vocations, giving our gifts and talents across all of life, let Christians remember the importance of preserving a government that will allow it.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Space and “the primal desire to conquer”
Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off the launch pad for the final space shuttle mission. Image credit: NASA TVImagine you’re eight and you’re given a dog. The first thing your parents say is that you need to take care of him: feed him, play with him in the backyard, and train him so that he doesn’t do bad things in the house. You and the new dog quickly e “the dog and his master.” That well-worn phrase can tell us something...
Real Healthcare Reform
Many politicians have talked of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Mitt Romney has said nullifying the healthcare law would be one of his first actions if he was elected president. However, rather than just repealing the law and going back to the status-quo, with minor changes, the American people should demand true reform. In 2001, Milton Friedman, the famed, Nobel-prize winning economist, published an article titled “How to Cure Health Care.” (Although worthy of serious consideration,...
Questions for Ethanol
Political news changes quickly, and now reports ing out of Washington DC that Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has been leading the way in killing the ethanol subsidy and tariff, has struck a deal with Senators Amy Klobuchar and John Thune, two stalwarts for protecting ethanol. While the rumored deal does not indicate the repeal of the blending mandate it is a step in the right direction. However, while we wait on Congress and the President for action, the Brazilian ethanol...
Otto von Habsburg (1912-2011)
I cannot permit the death of His Imperial and Royal Highness Otto von Habsburg at age 98 on July 4th to pass unnoticed. To look into his face was to gaze into the map of the 20th Century, and to hear him recount his ideas, insights and encounters was worth more than an entire course in European history in most universities. Only slightly acquainted with the man (his father Emperor Karl was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004),...
Journal of Markets & Morality 14, no. 1 (Spring 2011)
The newest edition of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now available online to subscribers. This issue of the journal features a Scholia translation of selections from On the Observation of the Mosaic Polity by Franciscus Junius (1545-1602), the Huguenot, Reformed, scholastic theologian (a Latin version of Junius’ original treatise is available for download at Google Books, along with a host of his other works). Best known as a professor of theology at Leiden University from 1592–1602, Junius authored...
Water: A Right or a Commodity?
Water is ing scarcer and even more of a necessity than it was before. And while stories of water scarcity typically occur in underdeveloped, arid countries, the United States and other developed countries must realize they are no longer exceptions and must take into consideration the importance of water and the allocation of its use. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explores the severe lack of water in Palm Beach, Florida. Residents are restricted to once-a-week watering schedules...
Relief Efforts Stall Out in Haiti
Acton’s Rev. Robert A. Sirico published an article in Religion and Liberty in the fall of 2010 on Haiti and how we could help it recover. It has been several months since then, and eighteen months since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti near Port-au-Prince, killing around 230,000 people. Eighteen months is a long time and many, including myself, have pushed Haiti into the background of their minds. However, Haiti is still desperately struggling to recover from this terrible disaster....
Pope Benedict and Liturgical Beauty
There has been a lot of buzz throughout the Roman Catholic Church as it prepares to implement a new missal on November 27. As the Church begins a new chapter in its history, Tony Oleck writes an article for Crisis Magazine titled “The True Beauty of Liturgy.” Oleck is a Roman Catholic seminarian for the Congregation of Holy Cross and a summer intern at the Acton Institute. In his article Oleck explains the reasoning behind Pope Benedict’s new missal while...
Disaster Response and the Ministry of Presence
I wrote a piece on the Church’s response to disaster relief in the Spring issue of Religion & Liberty. The article for R&L is in part an extension of mentary “Out of the Whirlwind: God’s Love and Christian Charity” after a tornado hit Joplin, Mo. in May. Being a Katrina evacuee myself, I returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for a time after seminary and the devastation of so many things I was familiar with and had known was simply...
Editorial: Intergenerational Ethics and Economics
My editorial, “Intergenerational Ethics and Economics,” appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality (more details about that issue here). In this short piece I explore some of the implications and intergenerational consequences of public debt. For this I take my point of departure with the much-discussed “A Call for Intergenerational Justice,” but I also point out the importance of considering opportunity cost and how that concept has been applied in an analogous conversation about climate...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved