Abstract
The role of religion in societies is an ongoing debate even for most of the Western countries, which have advanced in terms of modernity. Particularly, the studies show that the impact of Christianity moved from the public sphere to the private domain due to the Modernist worldview that evolved in the context of Reformation and French Revolution. At the end of the 19th century, religious groups have arised out of questioning the division between the individual and public spheres of religion in Europe. One of the foremost of these movements is the Neo-Calvinist tradition shaped by Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). This study is to deal with the main intellectual resources of the Neo-Calvinist tradition, which Kuyper developed by reinterpreting Calvinism in the context of "worldview" and to explain its effects on Western societies.
By opposing modern secular society, Kuyper tried to develop a social system that is pluralistic in religion. Calvinism, in contrast to the guiding principles of contemporary secular culture, has the qualities to permeate society as a whole, according to Kuyper, who builds a theological foundation for the entire truth. Kuyper developed a worldview based on the Christian belief systems through antitheses after critically reconsidering the underlying principles of modernity. In contrast, he asserts, there is a widespread perception in America that Calvinism is the most effective safeguard against the loss of liberties, but the idea that people's beliefs must be abandoned for freedom predominates in Europe.
Kuyper developed a worldview based on Christian belief principles through antitheses by critically revising the fundamental ideas of modernism. He described the period he lived in as a crisis period and did not hold back while expressing the problematic aspects of Christianity. He contended that the church must acknowledge the reality of contemporary culture, have a theology that is relevant to the society in which it lives, and acknowledge its own cultural captivity, which it ignores. Kuyper viewed the conflict between the sacred and the secular as a war between good and evil in his mind, which is why he prefers military imagery when explaining the role of the church and compares the church to the army when discussing it in his works.
According to Kuyper, who supports the understanding of cultural diversity and pluralism, the paradigm of "Sphere Sovereignty" also displays a variety of worldviews. Everyone has a worldview that affects how they live, and he claims that institutional manifestations of people's worldviews, such as Islamic schools and Jewish butchers, should exist in the open.
After many years as a member of parliament, served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. Through his "Sphere Sovereignty" model, he attempted to reshape the relationship between religion and politics as well as the role of religion in society. In a society where Modernism, which rejects religious values, is dominant, he battled for religious life and opposed the "neutral worldview" principles that Modernism developed. It is possible to say that with his studies and the practices he followed, he ignited the fuse of today's cultural conflicts and debates in Western societies.
The purpose of this research is to examine how Neo-Calvinism came to be a comprehensive belief system within the framework of Abraham Kuyper's reinterpretation, and to clarify the core principles of the Neo-Calvinist worldview for social and religious life.
It is also to explain the theological foundations of the long-standing struggle between modernism and Christian worldviews, and thus to increase the level of consciousness and awareness about the role of the Protestant Neo-Calvinist worldview in international politics in the new world order shaped by the USA. Therefore, we searched the literature on national and international sources using the descriptive method of the History of Religions. By doing so, the article will provide the theoretical framework of Neo-Calvinism, which shaped the state, religion, science, philosophy, education, politics, and social life. It also will demonstrate how significant the achievements in the struggle against secular, modern, and positivist living based on the Neo-Calvinist worldview have become in current Western society.