Beginning in September, Peter Mouw ’23 will be working on his master’s degree at the Theological University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Through an open study/research grant from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Mouw will be exploring the origins of Neo-Calvinism: a 19th-century revival movement in the Netherlands that sought to adapt Reformed thought into a modern and pluralistic society, holding that life and all its aspects can be shaped by a distinctively Christian worldview.

“I’m not done learning. I don’t have the answers that I want to have, or the background that I want to have, so I just need to keep digging,” said Mouw.

A Thirst for Learning

Mouw aspires to one day earn his PhD and join the academy. This thirst for learning is something that can be traced back to his undergraduate years at �ƴ��ɸ�����̳. In fact, it’s the reason he stepped onto the Grand Rapids campus in the first place.

“When applying to colleges, it was important to me to go to a Reformed institution,” said Mouw. “The depth and breadth of the Reformed tradition is interesting, and, above all, I think it’s true. Neo-Calvinism in particular entails an approach that demands every thought and every subject be taken captive for Christ. There’s an unwillingness to flatten things into exclusively or reductionalistically secular, scientific, or spiritual categories.”

For Mouw, Calvin proved to be the perfect place for his intellectual imagination to run wild. And it’s where he discovered this desire to go beyond what he thought he knew about the Neo-Calvinist tradition to gain a deeper understanding.

Exploration Everywhere

“Throughout my time at Calvin I felt like I fell into doing this [exploring the Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition], pathways kept opening up, interesting things kept appearing that I wanted to follow,” said Mouw. 

The path started his first semester in Dutch 101. From there, he ended up taking four more Dutch courses, and would end up enjoying it so much, he made the subject his minor.

He was further drawn in through a job he took in Heritage Hall, which contains the archives of the university, seminary, denomination, and Dutch immigrant papers.

Then, his senior year he was given a copy of Dutch politician and historian Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s Unbelief and Revelation. And that changed his course.

Laying the Foundation for Fulbright

“I was planning to do my senior thesis with Professor van Liere on 16th-century resistance ethics in the Netherlands, but I read this book and was interested in it,” said Mouw. “So, I ended up changing my thesis topic before my senior year and again after the first semester. I pretty much wrote two theses, which I wouldn’t recommend for a laid-back final semester.”

Mouw’s senior thesis focused on Neo-Calvinism around the turn of the 19th-century and centered around Dutch poet and thinker Willem Bilderdijk—a religious mystic and political reactionary against the French Revolution.  It laid the foundation for what he’s set to dig into this September in the Netherlands.

“What I’m studying started at Calvin, but my studies next year will span more broadly through the 19th and 20th centuries, spanning from the reformed scholastics to Kuyper and Bavinck to Schilder and Dooyeweerd,” said Mouw. “I want a deeper understanding of the Neo-Calvinist tradition than we typically receive in the United States.”

As Mouw gets ready to start this next adventure, he is grateful for how his time at Calvin encouraged him in his determined quest for truth and knowledge.

Proximity Matters

“I’m very grateful to Calvin. I don’t think that I could have had as strong of an application had I gone anywhere else. Calvin offers classroom study of Dutch and terrific history and philosophy departments, all really centered directly around Christian thought and theological themes, even if separate from the disciplines of theology,” said Mouw. “I feel like my four years studying philosophy, history, and Dutch at Calvin prepared me very well to be competitive in the Fulbright selection process.”

“I also spent a tremendous amount of time interacting with and learning directly from my professors. One of the reasons I’m doing this is because I spent so much time with my history advisor Kate van Liere and other professors (current and emeritus) making an attempt to nail down what Willem Bilderdijk actually thought,” said Mouw.

And it wasn’t just about the proximity to excellent professors he notes as invaluable.

“One of the big reasons I decided to change my thesis topic to origins of Neo-Calvinism is because of Hekman Library,” said Mouw. “Hekman Library is one of the best libraries in the United States for studying Dutch Neo-Calvinism.

“I’d be reading a book and the footnote would point to an obscure journal that is not widely circulated, something published in the Netherlands in the 1920s. I’d think, ‘oh no I’ll have to order it through interlibrary loan,’ and then I’d search for it in WorldCat (the worldwide ILL system) and not only was there a copy in Hekman Library, it was on the shelf right next to me. I experienced that a number of times in my studies, and it shouldn’t have come completely as a surprise, but I found it remarkable. It was all at my fingertips.”

Mouw’s Fulbright Grant, which funds a monthly stipend for living costs while he’s studying abroad, runs September 2024 through July 2025.