Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (21 August 1801,

Voorburg Voorburg () is a town and former municipality in the west part of the province of South Holland, Netherlands. Together with the town Leidschendam and the village Stompwijk, it merged into the municipality of Leidschendam-Voorburg in 2002. Sit ...

– 19 May 1876), was a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

politician and historian.

Overview

Groen's father, Petrus Jacobus Groen van Prinsterer, was a physician, and at adult age operated in aristocratic circles. He was a member of the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, , abbreviated NHK ) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal famil ...

, the state church of the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

and of its Royal Family, although he deemed it to be in a poor condition. He was influenced by a then leading

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...

renewal movement known in the Netherlands as the ''

Réveil The Réveil (French for "revival", "awakening") of 1814 was a revival movement within the Swiss Reformed Church of western Switzerland and some Reformed communities in southeastern France. Origins The supporters were also called pejoratively ''mo ...

,'' the European Continental counterpart to the

Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...

. He studied at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

, and graduated in 1823 both as doctor of literature and LLD. From 1829 to 1833 he was a secretary to

William II of the Netherlands William II (; English: William Frederick George Louis; 6 December 1792 – 17 March 1849), known as Koning Willem de Tweede or Koning Willem II in the Netherlands, was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg. Wi ...

. During this time he attended Brussels Protestant Church under pastor Merle d'Aubigné. After that, he took a prominent part in Dutch home politics, and becoming the leader of the

Anti-Revolutionary Party The Anti-Revolutionary Party (, ARP) was a Protestant conservative and Christian democratic political party in the Netherlands. The party was founded in 1879 by Abraham Kuyper, a neo-Calvinist theologian and minister who served as Prime Mi ...

, both in the Second Chamber of parliament, of which he was a member for many years, and as a political writer. The doctrines of Guizot and

Stahl {{Wiktionary, Stahl, stahl Stahl (German language, German: ''steel'') is a surname of German and Swedish origin, which also occurs among Jews and Hutterites. It may refer to: * Agustín Stahl (1842–1917), Puerto Rican physician, ethnologist, an ...

influenced Groen. They permeate his controversial and political writings and historical studies, of which his ''Handbook of Dutch History'' (in

) and ''Maurice et Barnevelt'' (in French, 1875, a criticism of

Motley Motley is the traditional costume of the court jester, the motley fool, or the arlecchino character in ''commedia dell'arte''. The harlequin wears a patchwork of red, green and blue diamonds that is still a fashion motif. The word ''motley'' is ...

's ''Life of Van Olden-Barnevelt'') are the most important. Groen was ardently opposed to Thorbecke, whose principles he denounced as ungodly and revolutionary. Although Groen lived to see these principles triumph in the constitutional reforms implemented by Thorbecke, he never ceased to oppose them until his death in 1876.

Publications

By the time the revolutionary movement in Europe had begun to break out in various cities, the

monarchist Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. C ...

and restorationist secretary to the Dutch king began lecturing on the spiritual-political crisis of the Continent. Groen also was ready to publish. He had begun to do so with his ''Overview'' of 1831, his ''Essay on Truth'' of 1834, a manuscript harder to date precisely but entitled ''Studies on the revolution'', his ''Prolegomena'' of 1847 (the following year

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

issued the ''

Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The t ...

''). Groen's most influential work ''Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution'' appeared in an initial edition in 1847, and then a revised edition of 1868; there were subsequent editions as well. In time he founded an intellectual Christian political circle among the upper classes, through which Groen tried to teach the political responsibility of such people. In an effort to reach the Dutch intellectuals, he founded the daily newspaper De Nederlander from 1850 until 1855. Later on 1896, he published the weekly Nederlandsche Gedachten (Dutch Thoughts/Reflections). He is best known as the editor of the ''Archives et correspondence de la maison d'Orange'' (12 vols, 1835-1845), which procured for him the title of the Dutch Gachard. John L. Motley acknowledges his indebtedness to Groen's ''Archives'' in the preface to his ''Rise of the Dutch Republic'', at a time when the American historian had not yet made the acquaintance of King William's archivist. It also bore testimony to Groen's influence as a writer of history in the correspondence published after his death. At the first reception, in 1858, of Motley at the royal palace at the Hague, the king presented him with a copy of Groen's ''Archives'' as a token of appreciation and admiration of the work done by of William I, prince of Orange. This copy, bearing the king's autograph inscription, afterwards came into the possession of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Motley's son-in-law.

Thoughts

The translator of the Dutch political thought and influence of Groen, Harry Van Dyke, has summarized Groen's mature view in this way:

"We are living in a condition of permanent revolution... revolutions are here to stay and will grow much worse in scope and intensity unless men can be persuaded to return to Christianity, to practise its precepts and to obey the
Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christianity, Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino, AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message w ...
in its full implications for human life and civilized society. Barring such a revival, the future would belong to socialism and communism, which on this view were but the most consistent sects of the new secular religion. To Groen, therefore, the political spectrum that presented itself to his generation offered no meaningful choice. "In terms of his analysis, the 'radical left' was composed of fanatical believers in the godless
ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
; the 'liberal centre,' by comparison, by warm believers who warned against excesses and preached moderation; while the 'conservative right' embraced all those who lacked either the insight, the prudence, or the will to break with the modern tenets yet who recoiled from the consequences whenever the ideology was practised and implemented in any consistent way. None of the shades or 'nuances of
secular liberalism Secular liberalism is a form of liberalism in which secularist principles and values, and sometimes non-religious ethics, are especially emphasised. It supports the separation of religion and state. Moreover, secular liberals are usually advoca ...
represented a valid option for Christian citizens." Groen called for a rejection of the entire available spectrum of political positions, calling for a "radical alternative in politics, along anti-revolutionary, Christian-historical lines".

The South African scholar Jan Adriaan Schlebusch describes the basic theme of Groen's anti-revolutionary theory as follows:

"The dichotomy of revolution or rebellion against God on the one hand and faith in God on the other, was one that Groen believed to be ever-present throughout history. Groen therefore also understood this epistemic Revolution to be opposed to history, i.e. the divinely-ordained cosmic-historic telos of evangelistic progress and the glorification of the Lordship of Christ ... ‘Revolution’ for Groen was ultimately a denial of the sovereignty of God in favor of the sovereignty of mankind, with the ‘revolutionary’ ideas of the Enlightenment being the fruits of a rationalist religion wrongly elevating man-made abstractions as truths supreme over the revelation of God. This epistemic perspective shaped his political theory and engagement. Groen argued that the Revolution, not only as a historical-political phenomenon, but as a historical-philosophical development, amounted to an anti-Christian infringement upon the natural rights, established socio-political relationships, and justice system rooted in a divinely-ordained social order. Therefore the anti-revolutionary or Christian-historical position entailed opposing this epistemic Revolution as a path doomed to social disaster and political tyranny."

Works in English translation

* ''Unbelief and Revolution: A Series of Lectures in History''. Amsterdam: Groen van Prinsterer Fund, 1973-1975. * ''The History of the Revolution in its First Phase''. Amsterdam: Groen van Prinsterer Fund, 1978. * ''Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution''. Translated by Collin Wright. Aalten, the Netherlands: WordBridge Publishing, 2015. * ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: A Refutation of Liberalism''. Translated by Jan Adriaan Schlebusch. St. Petersburg, FL: RefCon Press, 2022.

References

External links