The years 2020–2021 were difficult for many pastors. The global response to the covid pandemic set before churches and their leaders seemingly endless decisions that were, for most pastors, previously unimaginable. Should we, in an effort to protect the health of our people and community, shut down our public gatherings? If so, for how long? When we gather, should we observe social distancing and mask requirements? Does Scripture require us to comply with all regulations of local health authorities, or do we have a right, or even a duty, to resist them at a certain point? Should we advocate for or oppose vaccination among our members, or should we leave that matter to individual consciences? If some of our church members face a choice between receiving a vaccine or losing their jobs, should we help them pursue a religious exemption? Each one of these questions, and many more like them, contained within it a polarizing potential to tear a church apart.
As a pastor in Jackson, Tennessee, I am thankful that our state and local authorities governed with a relatively light touch by comparison to blue states and many major cities. Our church was able to navigate the challenges of the pandemic largely without government regulation beyond the initial phase of the pandemic in March—April, 2020. I am likewise thankful for a mature and gracious congregation that respected differences of opinion in the ensuing months and came through the pandemic a stronger church than we were before.
Like many pastors, I found myself thinking deeply about political issues in the fallout from the pandemic, and one source I turned to for help in 2021 was Abraham Kuyper’s work Our Program.[1] Written as a manifesto of Kuyper’s Antirevolutionary Party in the Netherlands, this work was first published in 1879. It is a rich source of Kuyperian reflection on the role and limits of the state. As a reader, I was surprised at how timely and relevant much of this nineteenth-century work is for the questions we faced in 2020—2021. At various places throughout this book, Kuyper speaks directly to questions related to public health, government authority for health emergencies, compulsory vaccinations, and related matters. Although he had written on these questions almost 150 years prior to our own head-on collision with them, it does not appear, at least from my recollection, that Kuyper’s voice had much of a hearing in evangelical conversations about the pandemic response. And that is a tragedy, because Kuyper’s work could have provided much-needed guidance to pastors in those challenging months. It would behoove all of us who are pastors to familiarize ourselves with Kuyper’s thought and categories on these issues so that, in the event that we ever face pandemic 2.0 (may God forbid!), we will have given theological reflection to questions largely unasked prior to March 2020.
1. Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, trans. Harry Van Dyke (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015).
Stay in Your Sphere
Fundamental to Kuyper’s political philosophy is the notion of sphere sovereignty. According to Kuyper, the authority of the state does not stand above that of other institutions in society. It is one sphere of authority, charged with certain tasks, that stands alongside other spheres, including the church, the family, and other various institutions of society. Each sphere is directly accountable to God, from whom all authority flows directly to each sphere. The authority of the church, for example, is not derived from the state, or vice versa.[2] For this reason, the authority of the state is circumscribed by divinely ordained limits. The state has no authority to encroach on that of another sphere, a divinely imposed limitation that entails the legitimacy of resistance to state authority when it attempts to do so: “Thus political authority operates alongside many other authorities that are equally absolute and sacred in the natural and spiritual world, in society and family. Every attempt by political authority to try and rule over one of those other areas is therefore a violation of God’s ordinances, and resistance to it is not a crime but a duty.”[3] Spheres of authority must maintain their own integrity, in part, by refusing to allow other spheres to commandeer them.
2. For a helpful exposition of the Kuyperian notion of sphere sovereignty, see David T. Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 230–39.
3. Kuyper, Our Program 21, 21.
If Kuyper could evaluate the overall pandemic response of 2020–2021 in America, he would no doubt assign a failing grade to the federal government, along with numerous state and local governments, on the question of respect for sphere sovereignty. We can highlight four particular areas where major failures occurred, which will in turn provide us with some theological direction about how to respond well to a future pandemic 2.0.
1. Relegating Religion
First, the state responded to the covid pandemic on the (secularized) liberal assumption that religion should be relegated to the inner life and so should have minimal public consequences. In the initial lockdowns of 2020, Americans quickly became familiar with the terminology of “essential” and “non-essential” businesses and organizations. In many locales, liquor stores were deemed essential while churches were deemed non-essential, with corresponding freedom of operation for the former and restrictions on the latter. The relegation of the public practice of religion to the “non-essential” sphere of life reveals a liberal assumption about religion that Kuyper strongly opposes in Our Program:
The basic error of this political system [liberalism] is the claim that one cannot really know if there is a God, hence that nothing objective can be established in regard to religion, and that this whole feature of the inner life of human beings belongs to the subjective, personal, at most domestic and ecclesiastical domain. . . . It is a system which prescribes that everything that is state must, qua state, ignore the living God.”[4]
4. Kuyper, Our Program 49, 58–59.
A proper state response to the public health emergency of 2020 not only would have shown greater respect for the central role that religion plays in society, it would have promoted, rather than hindered, humble supplication before God for the well-being of the nation. As Kuyper insightfully writes:
And if the government does not wish to stiffen this resistance [of the populace to burdensome demands during emergencies] but cause it to diminish, then as a servant of God it should demonstrate in such critical days that it has a heart. Then it should not, like a violent accomplice of unbelieving science, turn against the nation’s religious beliefs that only intensify in times of epidemics. Rather, when God’s judgments break out the government ought to share in the spirit of awe that stirs the souls before the majesty of God. Rather than prohibiting prayer services it should itself proclaim days of prayer. In this way its solemn decisions and actions will underscore the impression that as a government it is powerless to ward off the plague that is visiting the nation and that it knows no better refuge for deliverance that [sic] to humble itself before almighty God.[5]
5. Kuyper, Our Program 203 248.
Could he evaluate the American pandemic response, Kuyper would criticize its overwhelmingly secular assumptions, preeminent among which is the assumption that bodily health concerns trump all others. On the contrary, he argues, “the health authorities must not let the soul suffer for the sake of the body.”[6] Only a secularized liberalism would opt for that tradeoff in society.
6. Kuyper, Our Program 195 241.
2. Appropriating Authority
Second, the state responded to the covid pandemic by encroaching on the authority of the church. For Kuyper, church and state are distinct spheres, each one directly accountable to God. The church has been entrusted with the task of proclaiming the gospel. The state has not been entrusted with that task, but that does not mean the state has no relation to gospel proclamation at all. According to Kuyper, as “God’s servant” the state’s obligations with respect to the preaching of the gospel are defined negatively. In other words, the state has not been charged to engage in evangelism, financially support the church, or define doctrine, but it is certainly obligated by God not to do certain things with respect to the gospel. Preeminent among those obligations is the state’s responsibility to ensure the gospel’s free course in society by placing no obstructions in its way.[7] The forced closure of churches and burdensome regulations on church gatherings would seem to violate this obligation, and all the more so once the government’s unwillingness to regulate other kinds of public gatherings (including Black Lives Matter protests and riots) became evident in the summer of 2020. Even if other societal organizations must be forcibly regulated with emergency measures, the state should be most hesitant to interfere with the operations of the church: “Our position is that churches are unique bodies that cannot be compared to other associations. Churches can lay claim to separate treatment in the law, hold sway over their members even before any action of their will,[8] ought to be subject to special regulations,[9] and are not to be regarded as incidental but as one of the highest and most essential expressions of the life of the nation.”[10] In fact, Kuyper even refers to the forced closure of churches during epidemics as “the shameful idea of some heartless magistrates.”[11]
7. Kuyper, Our Program 56 66. Other negative obligations include the government’s obligation not to introduce or protect a counter-gospel, its obligation to provide equal rights for all in religious affairs, and its obligation to allow freedom of conscience to the individual.
8. Kuyper’s paedobaptist theology stands out in particular with this statement.
9. By “special regulations” here, Kuyper apparently means distinctively favorable regulations.
10. Kuyper, Our Program 302 355.
11. Kuyper, Our Program 194 240.
3. Coercing Consciences
Third, the state responded to the covid pandemic by violating the consciences of individuals, not only with restrictions on their practices of worship, but also with the imposition or attempted imposition of vaccine mandates on broad segments of the population. For Kuyper, “[t]he conscience marks a boundary that the state may never cross.”[12] The right of the individual to obey his conscience (provided it does not lack the presumption of respectability[13]) imposes a strict boundary on the power of the state and prevents it from acting outside the sphere of its own authority:
12. Kuyper, Our Program 59, 69.
13. This test of a sincerely held belief is the only exception Kuyper notes on matters of conscience. For example, an atheist dodging a military draft because of a hastily discovered religious exemption would not pass the test of respectability. Nor would a claim to bizarre or outlandish beliefs only recently invented. See Kuyper, Our Program 61, 74.
Hence our supreme maxim, sacred and incontestable, reads as follows: as soon as a subject appeals to his conscience, government shall step back out of respect for what is holy.
Then it will never coerce. It will not impose the oath, nor compulsory military service, nor compulsory school attendance, nor compulsory vaccination, nor anything of the kind.[14]
14. Kuyper, Our Program 61, 73.
Kuyper singles out compulsory vaccination in his section on public hygiene as a matter that should be out of the question. Not only are physicians fallible in their opinions, which prevents the government from imposing health orthodoxy on its citizens, but government is also duty–bound to respect the consciences of individuals: “The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation’s spiritual resources as a smallpox epidemic itself.”[15]
15. Kuyper, Our Program 204, 248–249.
4. Acting Arrogantly
Fourth, the state responded to the covid pandemic by arrogantly assuming its own ability to control what is beyond human control. In a section focused on contagious diseases, Kuyper first argues that medical science, as of the late nineteenth century, had not advanced very far in understanding the transmission of communicable diseases. Major advances have been made since then, but the applicability of Kuyper’s second argument in this section of his work has not changed since 1879: “Truly efficacious measures, it should be kept in mind, will never be available in the case of contagious diseases.”[16] The abject failure of any nation to achieve “zero covid” since 2020 stands as a perfect illustration of this principle. Can the government do anything at all to mitigate the effects of an epidemic? Kuyper offers modest suggestions for different kinds of epidemics. He distinguishes between rapidly spreading deadly epidemics, calmer epidemics that are serious in their effects, and minor epidemics, including measles. On the first two categories, he advocates certain measures regarding the provision of medical care, the regulation of public transportation, etc. But regarding the last category of minor epidemics, he argues, “…the authorities should refrain from taking any measures. First of all, there is no way to fight a disease that is mostly transmitted during the incubation phase. Moreover, minor epidemics scarcely warrant such an infringement of personal freedom.”[17] The primary justification for societal lockdowns in 2020 was the controversial notion of the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 (either during its incubation phase or through functionally equivalent asymptomatic cases). For Kuyper, that level of societal control aims at a goal that cannot be achieved (which the data from 2020 in America confirms). One can imagine Kuyper expressing astonishment at the hubris of governing officials who believed they had the ability to control the spread of a contagious disease through health mandates. A state with greater humility before God would refrain from putting itself in his place by seeking to control what is humanly impossible to control.
16. Kuyper, Our Program 201, 246–247.
17. Kuyper, Our Program 202, 247–248.
Conclusion
On at least these four counts, Kuyper would regard the American pandemic response of 2020–2021 as an egregious violation of legitimate state authority. With that being the case, do pastors of today have any lessons to learn from Kuyper in the event that we should face that kind of government action again in the future? It seems that there are at least two.
First, whenever the state hinders the preaching of the gospel by hindering the operations of the church, it has overstepped its authority and has therefore legitimized resistance to its mandates. Pastors and churches may find themselves in situations where they must say with Peter and the other apostles, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). In some contexts, that may mean taking legal action against overreaching magistrates—the strategy pursued by Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.—which resulted in a favorable settlement for the church. In some contexts, it may mean engaging in civil disobedience by defiance of illegitimate government orders, which was the strategy pursued by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, one that eventually led to the legal vindication of the church. And in other contexts, it may mean enduring the oppression of fines or even imprisonment, which was the experience of Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church in Edmonton, Alberta. He too eventually received legal vindication. Whatever form the particular resistance strategy may take in a given context (and wisdom is justified by all her children), the willingness to defend, with courage, the church’s own sphere of authority against government overreach will be the greatest need of the hour in event of pandemic 2.0.[18] Simplistic appeals to Romans 13 or to love of neighbor, appeals that do not place those concerns in the wider biblical teaching regarding the state and its circumscribed sphere of authority, will not cut it.
18. For a helpful overview of the history of Christian resistance theory, see Glenn Sunshine, Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition (Moscow, ID: Canon Press), 2020.
Second, should the state attempt to impose future vaccine mandates, pastors and churches should support individuals who conscientiously object to such mandates. Whether the objection of a person’s conscience proceeds from moral concerns about the vaccine’s origin and production, or whether it is simply a concern to protect one’s own body from potential risks, the church must come to the aid of those who seek religious exemption from compulsory vaccination. Not all Christians will agree on the value and risks of taking vaccines, but all should agree that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Rom. 14:23), and thus any believer who cannot receive a vaccine in faith must not be forced by the state to sin against his own conscience.
If evangelicals had more familiarity with Kuyper prior to 2020, we might have responded overall to the challenges of the pandemic in different ways. Perhaps a wider exposure to his political manifesto could help prepare us should we ever confront the same challenges again.
