Sphere sovereignty

In Neo-Calvinism, sphere sovereignty (Dutch: "souvereinitet in eigen kring") is the concept that each sphere (or sector) of life has its own distinct responsibilities and authority or competence, and stands equal to other spheres of life. Sphere sovereignty involves the idea of an all encompassing created order, designed and governed by God. This created order includes societal communities (such as those for purposes of education, worship, civil justice, agriculture, economy and labor, marriage and family, artistic expression, etc), their historical development, and their abiding norms. The principle of sphere sovereignty seeks to affirm and respect creational boundaries, and historical differentiation.

Sphere sovereignty implies that no one area of life or societal community is sovereign over another. Each sphere has its own created integrity. Neo-Calvinists hold that since God created everything “after its own kind,” diversity must be acknowledged and appreciated. For instance, the different God-given norms for family life and economic life should be recognized, such that a family does not properly function like a business. Similarly, neither faith-institutions (e.g. churches) nor an institution of civil justice (i.e. the state) should seek totalitarian control, or any regulation of human activity outside their limited competence, respectively.

Historical Background

Sphere sovereignty is an alternative to the worldviews of ecclesiasticism and secularism (especially in its Statist form). During the Middle Ages, a form of Papal Monarchy assumed that God rules over the world "through the Church".

Ecclesiasticism was widely evident in the arts. Religious themes were encouraged by art's primary patron, the Church. Similarly, the politics in the Middle Ages often consisted of political leaders doing as the Church instructed. In both economic guilds and agriculture the Church supervised. In the family sphere, the Church regulated family procreation, sexual positions, sexuality, and infidelity. In the educational sphere, several universities were founded by religious orders.

During the Renaissance, the rise of a secularist worldview accompanied the emergence of a wealthy merchant class. Some merchants became patrons of the arts, independent of the Church. Protestantism later made civil government, the arts, family, education, and economics officially free from ecclesiastical control. While Protestantism maintained a full-orbed or holistically religious view of life as distinguished from an ecclesiasticism, the later secular Enlightenment sought to rid society of religion entirely.

Sphere Sovereignty was first formulated by the Neo-Calvinist theologian and Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper and further developed by philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Kuyper based the idea of sphere sovereignty partially on the Christian view of existence "coram Deo", every part of human life exists equally and directly “before the face of God.” For Kuyper, this meant that sphere sovereignty involved a certain form of separation of church and state and a separation of state and other societal spheres, or anti-statism.

Criticisms

For Kuyper, because the Netherlands included multiple religious-ideological (or, worldview) communities, these each should form their own "pillar," with their own societal institutions like schools, news media, hospitals, etc. This resulted in a pillarized society. Kuyper himself founded the Vrije Universiteit, where ministers for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands would be educated without interference by the Dutch state, because educating ministers lies beyond the sphere of civil government in Kuyper's view. Kuyper also helped establish a Reformed political party, several Reformed newspapers, and an independent Reformed church.

Addressing the emergence of pillarization in the context of Kuyper's view of sphere sovereignty, Peter S. Heslam states that 'Indeed, it could be argued that if Dutch society had been of a more “homogenous” nature --rather than manifesting a roughly tripartite ideological divide between Catholics, Protestants, and Humanists-- sphere sovereignty would still have been practicable whereas "verzuiling" [i.e., pillarisation] would not have been necessary.' [ [http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2002_spring/heslam.html Peter S. Heslam (Spring 2002) Prophet of a Third Way: The Shape of Kuyper's Socio-Political Vision. Journal of Markets & Morality 5(1).] ] .

Some see the development of pillarization in the Netherlands as a failure of Kuyper to properly limit the state to its own sphere among other societal spheres, and to distinguish societal spheres from worldview communities. [ [http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2002_spring/kennedy.html James C. Kennedy (Spring 2002) The Problem of Kuyper’s Legacy: The Crisis of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in Post-War Holland. Journal of Markets & Morality 5(1).] ] .

References

ee also

*Separation of Church and State

External links

* [http://www.rechten.vu.nl/dbfilestream.asp?id=1894 PDF article on Dooyeweerd's Societal Sphere Sovereignty]
* [http://www.isi.salford.ac.uk/dooy/summary.html#irreducible Andrew Basden's Dooyeweerd pages: irreducible ontology]