A Free Church, a Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper's American Public Theology

This volume uses the thought of Abraham Kuyper as a model for American evangelicals engaged in today’s cultural debate. Offering a new interpretation of Kuyper’s public theology that emphasizes its rhetorical and poetic aspects, John Bolt builds a credible public theology that directly applies to Christian political activism.

In considering such key issues as poverty, wealth and power, theocracy and pluralism, civil religion, the culture wars, and political cooperation between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, Bolt also compares Kuyper’s views with the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, Lord Acton, Pope Leo XII, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jonathan Edwards. Bolt shows that focusing on Kuyper’s rhetorical and mythopoetic perspective, rather than on his theological and philosophical ideas, provides contemporary evangelicals with a more meaningful and effective theology for the public square.