Eight letters, a cable and a memorandum were incorporated in Abraham Kuyper between parsonage and parliament, a paper presented, in April 2012, by Harry Van Dyke at a conference on Neo Calvinism and democracy, sponsored by the Abraham Kuyper Center for Public Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.

The eight letters, of which six letters are presented in excerpts, together with nine letters from Groen van Prinsterer, of which seven are excerpts, belong to a specific correspondence of 17 letters written by Kuyper and by Groen van Prinsterer between January 6, 1874 and February 9, 1874, and completed by a cable, dated February 10, 1874, from Kuyper. The memorandum (see annotation 1929.02) is an excerpt of 1992.01, app. 9 and was attached to Kuyper’s cover letter dated February 4, 1874 (see also 1937.01, pp. 278-282).

The core of his correspondence concerns Kuyper's position as he stands on the threshold of his political career. Kuyper describes his uneasy feelings and thoughts and mentions his preconditions concerning a possible membership of parliament; Groen van Prinsterer consults and affirms Kuyper. A correspondence that culminates in Kuyper's memorandum of 'loose thoughts' that he submitted to his correspondent and finally in his non-triumphant and very short cable concerning his acceptance of the election to member of the Second Chamber.

By focussing on this issue, those parts of the letters not related to it have been left out.