Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What Kuyper Can Teach Us About Trump and the ‘Third Temptation’
What Kuyper Can Teach Us About Trump and the ‘Third Temptation’
Jul 8, 2025 2:14 AM

Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. recently stirred up a bit of hubbub over his endorsement of Donald Trump, praising the billionaire presidential candidateas a “servant leader” who “lives a life of helping others, as Jesus taught.”

For many evangelicals, the disconnect behind such a statement is more than a bit palpable. Thus, the critiques and dissents ensued, pointing mostly to fortable co-opting of Trump’s haphazard political proposals with Christian witness.

As Russell Moore put it:

Politics driving the gospel rather than the other way around is the third temptation of Christ. He overcame it. Will we?

— Russell Moore (@drmoore) January 18, 2016

Richard Muow picks up on this same point over at First Things, noting that this “third temptation” has lured many Christians throughout church history, and was aptly warned against by Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch statesmen and theologian.

Himself a Calvinist, Kuyper traced many of these errors within his own tradition, though concluding that the proper esfrom within Calvinism’s own theological resources.

As Mouw explains:

In tension with the practices and events that Kuyper deplores, he holds up an underlying Calvinist celebration of the liberty of the individual conscience—a theme clearly on display, he observes, in the way “our Calvinistic Theologians and jurists have defended the liberty of conscience against the Inquisition.” Indeed, Kuyper argues, it was the genius of Calvinism to oppose the French Revolution’s corrupt notion of individual liberty as the freedom “for every Christianto agree with the unbelieving majority” in favor of the kind of liberty, as Calvinism eventually came to endorse explicitly, “which enables every man to serve Godaccording to his own conviction and the dictates of his own heart.”

This healthy understanding of liberty was put on display in a special way, says Kuyper, under Calvinism’s influence in the Netherlands. “There,” he observes, “the Jews were hospitably received; there the Lutherans were in honor; there the Mennonites flourished; and even the Arminians and Roman Catholics were permitted the free exercise of their religion at home and in secluded churches.”

Or, as Kuyper himself put itin his 1879 political manifesto,Our Program(now available from Lexham Pressin partnership with the Acton Institute):

The mission of our republic was to use its armies and fleets and mercial influence to protect the free course of the gospel throughout Europe and other continents and to safeguard the free course of the gospel at home in accordance with freedom of conscience for everyone.

The inspiring ideal of our nation at that time was civil liberty, not as a goal in itself but as the vehicle and consequence of that much higher liberty that is owed to men’s conscience.

And so people knew what they lived for; they knew the purpose of their existence. They believed, they prayed, they gave thanks. And blessings were plentiful: the country enjoyed prosperity, happiness, and peace.

William of Orange was the spiritual father from whom this type grew and who preserved it from those excesses of the left and of the right that led similar efforts in Westminster and New England to such totally different es…The motto Hac nitimur, hanc tuemur — leaning on the power of God in his holy Word and deeming liberty a priceless good — was a marvelous and meaningful expression. When struck on coins it was a cautionary reminder for a trading nation that this treasure of Orange was to be deemed of greater value than all the spices from the Orient.

Evangelicals are right to seek a political order that “protects Christianity,” if by this we mean the protection ofa robust religious liberty that spans religions and dogmas, reinforcing abroader flourishing of society from the bottom up.

But this e from the Trumpian definition, wherein Christians are another disaffectedinterestgroup, primed for poisonous identity politics that seeks power and privilege as both its means and ends.Whatever visions of “greatness” Trumppromotes along the way — generic, libertine, or otherwise — Christians must be wary ofswallowing the bait.

As Mouw concludes, “The religious freedom we long for has e as part of a larger movement for justice that generates a prehensive vision for a pluralistic society.”

For more on Kuyper’s contribution to Christian social thought, see Our Program and the rest of his Collected Works in Public TheologyfromLexham Press.

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
Mere Comments: The Neo-Anabaptist Temptation
Today at Mere Comments I highlight what I’m calling the “Neo-Anabaptist temptation.” Check it out. ...
Global Warming Consensus Alert: KILL ‘EM ALL
I’ll admit – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Global Warming Consensus Alert because, frankly, any “consensus” that existed was blown apart by the release of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mails, which revealed a whole bunch of underhanded activity on the part of scientists promoting the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. What’s the point anymore? The unshakeable climate “consensus” has been shown to be the fraud that it always was, and the catastrophic climate...
Public Accountability for Public Officials
Via TechDirt: …a judge has tossed out the wiretapping claims pointing out that there was no expectation of privacy out in public. “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public,” the judge wrote. “When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation.” There’s more here and here on the question of law enforcement and ‘citizen...
Review: Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers began Witness, the classic account of his time in the American Communist underground, with the declaration: “In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.” The line was most of all a deep recognition of the power of God to redeem what was once dead. Witness was a landmark account of the evils of Communism but most importantly a description of the bankruptcy of freedom outside of the sacred. “For Chambers, God was always the prime mover in...
Trailer: Doing the Right Thing
The Colson Center for Christian Worldview is preparing to release a new study DVD this fall titled, Doing the Right Thing: A Six-Part Exploration of Ethics. The DVD is designed as a resource for small-group studies and features leading thinkers who explore the need for ethical behavior in the marketplace, public square, political life and other areas. Hosts Brit Hume, Chuck Colson, Dr. Robert George and a distinguished panel — including Acton’s Rev. Robert Sirico and Michael Miller — undertake...
Samuel Gregg: Europe’s Broken Economies
Acton’s Research Director in the American Spectator: Europe’s Broken Economies By Samuel Gregg During September this year, much of Europe descended into mild chaos. Millions of Spaniards and French went on strike (following, of course, their return from six weeks vacation) against austerity measures introduced by their governments. Across the continent, there are deepening concerns about possible sovereign-debt defaults, stubbornly-high unemployment, Ireland’s renewed banking woes, and the resurgence of right-wing populist parties (often peddling left-wing economic ideas). Indeed, the palpable...
German Freedom and the Danger of Socialism
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I remember German reunification and reflect on its relevance for the present. Twenty years ago this Sunday, East and West Germany reunited, capping one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern history. Communism in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites had collapsed; the oppressed nations of Europe rejoined the “free world.” My generation was the last to straddle the two worlds, pre- and post-Soviet Union. When I was in elementary and high school,...
Questions on Work and Intellectual Development
Carl Trueman has a lengthy reflection and asks some pertinent and pressing questions on the nature of work and human intellectual development. Recalling his job at a factory as a young man in the 1980s, Trueman writes concerning those who were still at their positions on the line when he had moved on: Their work possessed no intrinsic dignity: it was unskilled, repetitive, poorly paid, and provided no sense of achievement. Yes, it gave them a wage; but not a...
A Federal Tax Receipt
There’s an old saying to the effect: “Show me a man’s checkbook and I’ll show you what’s important to him.” It may not be quite the same as a checkbook, but NPR’s Planet Money passes along what a receipt from the federal government might look like for an average taxpayer (HT): As Third Way, who put together the taxpayer receipt, argues: An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention...
Ecumenical Witness or Ecumenical Tyranny?
Robert Joustra, writing on the website of the Canadian think tank Cardus, has published a thoughtful review of Jordan Ballor’s Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness. The reviewer understands that when, … controversial social science infiltrates ecclesial confessions, twin dangers promising the integrity of the Gospel, and splitting the church on political and economic issues. Ecumenical superstructures claiming to speak with ecclesial authority on technical matters worry me, even when technical experts are enlisted. The point...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved