Sphere sovereignty

This created order includes societal communities (such as those for purposes of education, worship, civil justice, agriculture, economy and labor, marriage and family, artistic expression, etc.

Similarly, neither faith-institutions (e.g. churches) nor an institution of civil justice (i.e. the state) should seek totalitarian control, or any regulation of human activity outside their limited competence, respectively.

The concept of sphere sovereignty became a general principle in European countries governed by Christian democratic political parties, who held it as an integral part of their ideology.

While Protestantism maintained a full-orbed or holistically religious view of life as distinguished from an ecclesiasticism, the later secular Enlightenment sought to rid society of religion entirely.

[citation needed] Sphere sovereignty was first formulated at the turn of the 20th century by the neo-Calvinist theologian and Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper and further developed by philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd.

The family (defined as the covenantal commitment of one man and one woman to each other and to their offspring) is not instituted by the state nor by any other external power, but proceeds naturally from the heads of households, who are directly responsible to God.

Whenever a government presumes to regulate outside its sovereignty, those serving within the affected sphere should protest that the State is interfering in their internal affairs.

The question is the proper role of civil governance and its intrinsic principle limits in terms of which it can act without interfering in the sovereignty of other spheres.

For Kuyper, because the Netherlands included multiple religious-ideological (or, worldview) communities, these each should form their own "pillar", with their own societal institutions like schools, news media, hospitals, etc.