Thread by @tisaiahcho

Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper "denounced Laissez-faire capitalism as inimical to human well-being, material and spiritual" and as "out of tune with Scripture and contrary to the will of God."

Kuyper argued that laissez faire capitalism:

1) "replac[ed] the spirit of 'Christian compassion' with “the egoism of a passionate struggle for possessions,"

2) resulted in the "abrogation of the claims of community for the sake of the sovereign individual."

3) commodified labor, which "denied the image of God and the

rightful claims of a brother."

4) idolized the "supposedly free market, which deprived the weak of their necessary protections, licensed the strong in their manipulations, & proclaimed the consequences to be the inevitable workings of natural law.”

James Bratt, “Abraham Kuyper”

The last point is especially important, given some recent comments about the free market. Kuyper recognized that proponents of laissez faire capitalism idolized the "free market" ("free" only in name) and believed that the "free market" was grounded in natural law/creation order.

Likewise, Kuyper actually stands within the mainstream Reformed tradition and its views of laissez faire capitalism (or proto forms of it) that can be found in Luther and Calvin. And of course, the mainstream Reformed tradition in many cases attempted to apply social/political

ethics gleaned from the church fathers. In other words, seeing laissez faire capitalism (or any of its antecedents) as being equivalent to natural law/creation order is quite clearly outside of the broad Christian tradition. That's actually a very novel opinion.

Lastly, few may know that Kuyper actually published, with his own intro, a Dutch translation of "Christianity and Labor," a pamphlet written by Wilhelm von Ketteler, the father of the Catholic social teaching and a huge influence on rerum novarum.