Religious Life
In May 1862, he was declared eligible for the ministry and 1863 he accepted a call to become minister for the Dutch Reformed Church for the town of Beesd. In the same year he married Johanna Hendrika Schaay (1842–1899). They would have five sons and three daughters. In 1864 he began corresponding with the anti-revolutionary MP Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who heavily influenced his political and theological views (see below).
Around 1866, he began to sympathize with the orthodox tendency within the Dutch Reformed Church. He was inspired by the simple reformed faith of Pietje Balthus, a farmer's wife. He began to oppose the centralization in the church, the role of the King and began to plead for the separation of church and state.
In 1867, Kuyper was asked to become minister for the parish in Utrecht and he left Beesd. In 1870 he was asked to come to Amsterdam. In 1871 he began to write for the De Heraut (The Herald).
In 1872, he founded his own paper, De Standaard (The Standard). This paper would lay the foundation for the network of reformed organization, (the reformed pillar), which Kuyper would found.
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