The Center for Public Justice (CPJ) presented its 27th Annual Kuyper Lecture, featuring Hans-Martien ten Napel, Ph.D., on the topic “In Search of the Radical Middle: Navigating Populism and Progressivism.” The lecture took place on Thursday, April 4, 2024, at 7:30 pm ET at the Great Hall of Calvin University’s Prince Conference Center in Grand Rapids, MI.

Hans-Martien explored the political landscape in the US and Europe, addressing the challenges posed by populism and progressivism. How should Christians navigate these political shifts? What insights can be gained from neo-Calvinist thought? This engaging discussion aims to illuminate a path forward, drawing on Hans-Martien’s Dutch neo-Calvinist background, expertise as a constitutional and legal scholar, and familiarity with US constitutional and policy developments.

The Kuyper Lecture was followed by a panel discussion featuring Ruth Melkonian-Hoover, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science at Gordon College, and David Koyzis, Ph.D., affiliated with Global Scholars Canada. The respondents took up the theological, philosophical, and policy considerations raised by the lecturer, with an eye towards equipping young people and academics to carry forward the ideas practically.

Watch the recording of the lecture:

You can download the written copy of the remarks by the lecturer and respondents here.

Speaker:

Hans-Martien ten Napel, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University. Before transferring to the law school, he taught at the Institute for Political Science of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Leiden University. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA).

During the 2014-2015 academic year, he served as a ‘Research Fellow in Legal Studies’ at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ. He participated in an interdisciplinary research project entitled ‘Law and Religious Freedom.’ As a fruit of the fellowship, he published the monograph Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (Routledge, 2017; paperback edition, 2019).

From 2015 until 2023, he was a member of the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Religie, Recht en Beleid (Journal of Religion, Law and Policy) (Boom Juridische uitgevers). Since 2021, he has also been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy in Plano, TX, serving on the Executive Editorial Council of the Journal of Religion, Culture & Democracy.

Respondents:

Ruth Melkonian-Hoover, Ph.D., is a professor in the Political Science Department at Gordon College (B.A. Biola University; M.A. and Ph.D. Emory University). With Lyman Kellstedt, she recently co-authored Evangelicals and Immigration: Fault Lines Among the Faithful (2019). She has published in Social Science Quarterly, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Latin American Perspectives, and Political Research Quarterly as well as “Welcoming the Stranger,” in Cosmologics and “A Theology of Immigrant Labour,” in Comment. Her scholarly interests include Latin America, immigration, women and politics, and religion and international affairs. She is currently conducting research on religion and immigration in the United States.

David T. Koyzis, Ph.D. (Notre Dame), is affiliated with Global Scholars Canada and is the author of Political Visions and Illusions, with another book, Citizenship Without Illusions, coming out in November 2024.