"'Every square inch of the whole of reality.' Looking back on my undergraduate experience, there was one belief that caught me, took all of me, and over the years formed me; Abraham Kuyper's famous words captured that conviction, his passion becoming mine. The heart of this new English translation of Pro Rege is that same vision, viz. that Christ is King over the entire life of the world. But that is a contentious, difficult belief in any age, in every age. In the early years of the 21st century, full as they are of pluralization, secularization, and globalization, we feel certain that a biblically-born faith has never been more difficult to work out in the public life of the world. While our moment in history has its complex, even immense challenges, the great gift of Kuyper's magisterial work is the profound way that he took on these same questions in his time and place. With historical and sociological insight, with psychological and philosophical attentiveness, reading the world as he read the Word, he set forth an exhaustively-imagined account of the sovereignty of God over all things in heaven and on earth. Theologically rich, biblically grounded, Kuyper was passionately committed to helping ordinary people in ordinary places understand the meaning of their faith for life, always speaking to "the real world in which most people live their daily lives." Pro Rege is a masterpiece, and my hope is that people all over the world will become his students, entering into his wisdom about the perennial challenge of understanding the world and our place in it.
--Steven Garber, Principal, The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture; author of Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good
