For a Better Worldliness: Abraham Kuyper, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Discipleship for the Common Good

For a Better Worldliness is not only a statement of Abraham Kuyper’s and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological concept and historical practice of discipleship. It is also—and perhaps more importantly—a call to engage in the fullness of the Christian life here and now. While this book goes to great efforts to establish sound historical and theological insights specifically in regards to Kuyper and Bonhoeffer, there is a strong underlying current that these particular insights deeply matter to the life of discipleship in the world today.

History shows us that discipleship is not a singular journey; because of Jesus Christ it is not a description of one set path with one set of guidelines. A disciple can be a prime minister who unabashedly and successfully campaigned on his Calvinistic principles, just as he can be a participant in a coup d’état launched against a tyrant, leading to the disciple’s own imprisonment and death. Jesus Christ calls—whether to the height of political office, or to the dank prison cell, or (more likely for us) to somewhere in between.