What is Neocalvinism?

When it comes to my political views I would say that I’m a conservative, though admittedly more of a ‘fellow traveler” than a ‘true believer.” Perhaps its due to my Southern Baptist upbringing, but I’ve tended to shy away from aligning too closely with any particular party or affiliation. While I may have a broad agreement with most all of the principles of a movement (such as neoconservatism) I tend to take a ‘yes, but…” stance that prevents me from giving my full allegiance to the cause.
Another problem I have found is that my evangelical Christian beliefs rarely align with any particular philosophy. Too often, I’ve found, the political views form the core set of beliefs with a veneer of religiosity added in order to ‘christianize” it and make it palatable (Pat Robertson’s Republicanism comes to mind).
Recently, though, I’ve ‘rediscovered” the Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper, whom I had first heard about as a teenager when I began reading the works of Francis Schaeffer. Kuyper’s reformational worldview corresponds closely with my own and provides a foundation that I had been lacking. Yesterday I found David Koyzis’ blog which touches on the basics of Kuyperian political philosophy and now Macht from Prosthesis has pointed me to Gideon Strauss’ excellent site.
Strauss defines a term which I have previously been unfamiliar — neo-Calvinism. According to Strauss, a neocalvinist is someone who…

… confesses Jesus the Christ as God and Lord over all of life.
… recognises the enduring design of the world and seeks to shape their life in attentive response to that design.
… grieves the agony of evil, pain and failure in the world.

… brings hope and healing in their spheres of responsibility, conscious that hope only finds its fulfillment in the return of the Christ.
… cherishes the dignity of the human person as created in the image of God.
… accepts human responsibility for the cultivation of the world and therefore for the shaping of culture.

…. relishes the rich natural and cultural diversity of the world, and seeks to conserve and elaborate that diversity.

… works against the social effects of both individualism and collectivism, by taking part in the building of a diverse range of social relationships and helping to make room for social diversity in society.
Any one of these characteristics (or any subset of them, I guess), may also be true for adherents of other cultural movements. It is exhibiting them in this peculiar combination, and doing so in a conscious effort to contribute to their historical elaboration in the tradition of Augustine, Calvin, Groen Van Prinsterer, and Kuyper, that makes someone a neocalvinist.

Naturally, I agree with all of those points and find the concept rather intriguing. While neo-calvinism appears to be a more of an encompassing worldview than a specific political philosophy, I think it might be the foundation I’ve been searching for. I will certainly be learning more about this idea. Perhaps I’ve finally found a label that I can call my own…