Interview with Mike Wagenman on his new book on Kuyper

Mike Wagenman is the author of a new introductory book on Abraham Kuyper. Details  of  Engaging the World with Abraham Kuyper can be found here - get a copy, you won’t regret it. 

It's been over 18 months since the previous interview (here) - what's been happening in the intervening period?

I have continued to teach and mentor university students. My teaching has been primarily in the area of theological anthropology, helping students explore Christian reflections on what it means to be human and how our religious beliefs (explicit or not) become woven into the cultures we create (political or ecclesiastical). It has been a real joy as students have learned the skill of “reading” the culture(s) that surround(s) them and exploring what Christian faithfulness in the midst of these cultures might look like. In this vein, I worked about a year ago with fellow Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall (McGill) in preparing his 1980 book, The Canada Crisis: A Christian Perspective, for reprint. That little book has much more to offer (in terms of interpreting our times with a distinctly theological clarity) than has been recognized. 

I have also been working on an edited and reworked version of my PhD dissertation that will be published in 2020 - a theological analysis of Kuyper’s ecclesiology, with particular focus on what it might mean to call Kuyper’s ecclesiology “sacramental." John Halsey Wood has written about Kuyper’s ecclesiology being of a “sacramental” nature and I engage with some of his work and - with deep reliance on Vatican II and post-Vatican II Roman Catholic theologians - have offered a corrected and fuller understanding of Kuyper’s “sacramental ecclesiology.”

I’m also now about six months into a brand new research and writing project that seeks to uncover some of the momentous cultural changes that started to sweep across the western world in the 1960s. This is more in the vein of “theological aesthetics” as I am working to bring some new musical artists and genres from the period into dialogue with Charles Taylor and his work on “A Secular Age.” I’m convinced that what started in the 1960s isn’t finished yet. I’m also convinced that with the rise of “secularism” we can still perceive “echoes” of Christian faith or, more generally, transcendence in popular art forms.

How did your Engaging the World with Abraham Kuyper come about?

Engaging the World was really the brainchild of a pitch I made to Lexham Press, the publisher of the Abraham Kuyper Translation Project. In conversation with them, I pointed out that for those within the Kuyperian/ Reformed branch of European and North American Protestantism, Kuyper is fairly well-known. But outside that tradition, where a lot of new Kuyper interest is growing like wildfire, a short, accessible introduction was needed. They liked what I said and jumped on the project. They especially liked the idea of trying to do two things simultaneously: introduce Kuyper’s various cultural roles/thoughts in chronological order as well as frame Kuyper’s theological and cultural efforts in terms that American evangelicals outside the Kuyperian/Reformed tradition could understand and appreciate with little translation necessary. Both elements seemed especially important for introducing Kuyper to an evangelical audience: What all was Kuyper able to accomplish one hundred years ago? And, Why did he seek to accomplish so much, on such a wide number of fronts?

Who is the book aimed at - and why should they read it?

Because American evangelicals have become much more interested in Kuyper in recent years, the book was written for an American evangelical young adult (in that order). We wanted to keep the level out of the academic realm (thus also why it’s so short) and we wanted to notice some of the debates going on in the evangelical world today and how Kuyper’s thought might contribute to those debates. So, picture a Baptist volleyball player in Oklahoma who attends First Baptist Church and struggles in her public high school biology class or an electrician with a young family who's worried about politics and wants more nuance to the debate than he gets at his non-denominational church where it’s mostly just Red State/ Blue State simplicity. It was written so that high school classes and church small groups could tackle the book and have a good discussion with relative ease. To that end, I’m going to be posting a downloadable discussion guide for the book on my personal website later this Fall. Check out www.MichaelRWagenman.com for that.

So, because of this, those well-acquainted with Kuyper will be disappointed with the lack of nuance. This really is an introduction to Kuyper for those who need an introduction to Kuyper. Those already on the inside track with Kuyper will find it mostly old hat, though I hope that some of the biographical stories will catch their attention.

What do you hope the book will achieve (apart from making you rich!)?

I hope the book will spark some rich imagining of what it means to carry out our Christian discipleship and national citizenships under the lordship of Jesus Christ today.

The book is broken down into chapters that look at different cultural arenas in which Kuyper worked. The chapters address personal identity, public discourse/ media, education, church, socio-economics, and politics. Each of the chapters begins with a short story of something Kuyper did within each of these cultural spheres, followed by an explanation of why Kuyper did what he did - what his cultural theology was that motivated him, and concluding with some thoughts about how our Christian work in each of these areas might be sparked towards renewed commitment and more imaginative faithfulness because of Kuyper’s theology.

These are cultural arenas/spheres that we as Christians are deeply engaged in already. But maybe we’re not engaging in them fully aware that we are engaged as Christians or with a redemptive goal. Every Christian needs to navigate what faithfulness to the lordship of Christ looks like, mostly in these areas of our shared, public life together. And so I’m hoping that as readers are introduced to Kuyper, they will also be introduced to a robust version of Christian faith that propels disciples out into the world to be the salt and light that point to Jesus and the reign of God in the world. So I hope that the book helps to achieve a renewed level of Christian faithfulness in the world, that Christians would follow Kuyper as he follows Christ into a deep and faithful engagement with the world that God loves and Christ by his Spirit and people is redeeming.

You seem to downplay/ ignore the role of common grace in Kuyper - is there a reason for this?

Common grace would have been a wonderful theme in Kuyper to pursue and maybe another project will do this. Really, common grace is the big foundational concept that enabled Kuyper to venture out in the world beyond the institutional church with boldness. I didn’t include it for a number of reasons. First, the book would have had to have been twice as long to do the concept justice. Second, it would have made the book much more philosophical in nature rather than practical/ cultural and this would have rendered the book much more academic and therefore limited in audience. Third, common grace is a hotly debated element of Kuyper’s theology and the publisher and I envisioned a much more straightforward introduction. Those interested in common grace and other concepts that Kuyper championed will have to go elsewhere.

What do you see as the strengths of Kuyper's approach to engaging the world?

As I try to highlight in the book, Kuyper engaged in numerous cultural arenas/spheres because he was a Christian who sought to be faithful to Christ in his own historical/cultural moment. He clearly didn’t do this perfectly and I point out a few areas in the book where I believe he failed. And, I believe it is an open question whether or not Kuyper was truly a “public" theologian - something we have a lot to learn from the Scandinavian theologians living and working around the same time as Kuyper who were able to achieve a much more democratic solution to the increasing diversity of the late nineteenth century.

I also think a strength of the book is that it will gently poke Christians where they are vulnerable: in how they understand and live out their faith. It is my opinion that today many otherwise good and faithful Christians still tend to understand their Christian faith in one of two unhelpful and unfaithful ways. On the one hand, many view their Christian faith as a *private* (social) club that separates them from deep redemptive engagement with the world outside the institutional church (what I call “cultural Christians” in the book). They live their lives within the boundaries of the church with a "Field of Dreams" mentality: that we will build our church and keep ourselves holy and if people are interested in what we’re doing they will come to us (and become like us). Or, others view their Christian faith as deeply *personal*, a kind of nice but ultimately meaningless accessory to their lives when what really matters and what is most real is happening out in the world (what I call in the book, “modernist Christians"). These live their lives with their ultimate hope being actually rooted in a political ideology or cultural agenda and their Christian faith is so personal that it, functionally, has little or no formative or guiding influence on how they actually live their lives.

The strength of Kuyper’s approach was to be rooted and grounded in Christ, overwhelmed by his love and grace, transformed through his Word, inspired by God’s present and coming Kingdom of peace and shalom, with Christ having total control in matters of faith, belief, and practice, and then venturing out into the world to make a concrete redemptive difference from that fundamental starting point. Too often today we either don’t venture out into the world or, if we do, we think that the hope for the world emerges from the world itself rather than the in-breaking disruption of the Kingdom of God manifest in Jesus.

What about the weaknesses that we should be aware of?

As someone who has been immersed in the thought-world of Kuyper for decades now, I know that there are serious weaknesses with the book. First and maybe most important: I definitely didn’t have a chance to address the shortcomings of Kuyper as a person or as a theologian. We know today that Kuyper’s theological vision was deeply racist. Indeed, like we all are, he was rooted in his historical context. But too often his theological vision was deeply and, I think, inexcusably shaped by his European worldview that put wealthy white males at the top of the power hierarchy, complete with God’s blessing that this was how things were intended to be. I also touch on how Kuyper was a workaholic, to the point of suffering psychosomatic breakdown three times in his public career. I also would have very much liked to devote more time and attention to what I perceive to be an “early Kuyper” and a “late Kuyper.” I believe a solid case could be made that a significant shift occurs in Kuyper’s theological and political orientation after he is elected Prime Minister in 1901. I wonder how Kuyper succumbed to the temptations of political power after railing against it earlier in his career. Finally, I’m a Canadian citizen and theologian but the book has a decidedly American tone and orientation. There are many exciting ways in which Canadian (and global) Christians are experimenting with how to live out Kuyper’s Christian vision today. Unfortunately, like much in the globalized world we inhabit today, the American gravitational pull is overwhelming.

What was the best movie you have seen this year so far - what was so good about it?

I have to pass on this one - so many distractions, so little time.

What are you reading at the moment?

The Pastor in a Secular Age by Andrew Root

If you were stuck on a desert island and were only allowed two luxury items, what would you take?

That’s an easy question: A Tardis and a Millennium Falcon.