Sphere Sovereignty - Criticisms

Criticisms

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. This resulted in a pillarized society. Kuyper himself founded the Vrije Universiteit, where ministers for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands would be educated without interference by the Dutch state, because educating ministers lies beyond the sphere of civil government in Kuyper's view. Kuyper also helped establish a Reformed political party, several Reformed newspapers, and an independent Reformed church.

Addressing the emergence of pillarization in the context of Kuyper's view of sphere sovereignty, Peter S. Heslam states that 'Indeed, it could be argued that if Dutch society had been of a more “homogenous” nature—rather than manifesting a roughly tripartite ideological divide between Catholics, Protestants, and Humanists—sphere sovereignty would still have been practicable whereas verzuiling would not have been necessary.'.

Some see the development of pillarization in the Netherlands as a failure of Kuyper to properly limit the state to its own sphere among other societal spheres, and to distinguish societal spheres from worldview communities.