History of religion in the Netherlands
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[edit] Pre-Roman era
The Germanic and Celtic tribes in the Netherlands in the pre-Roman era had animistic religions with several gods, which presumably had a direct influence on daily life. One of the Germanic gods was Donar, the god of thunder - the thunder heard during thunderstorms was attributed to him. The Germanians worshipped trees, and one reminder of this practice is the Christmas tree.
[edit] Roman empire
The Germanic north remained Germanic animist. The Celtic south which became a part of the Roman Empire experienced a boost in population of Germanic stock, due to the continuous migration of Germanians into the Roman Empire. The Romans were animists as well, and they regarded the Germanic gods as the same ones as the Roman gods, only with different names. Many Romanised Germanians began worshipping Roman gods. Religions from the Middle East came to the Dutch Rhine delta in the second and third centuries. Roman soldiers worshipped the Persian god of Mythras. Also, Judaism and Christianity reached the present-day Netherlands.
Most of the Netherlands remained Germanic animist when the Roman Empire became Christian in the 4th century. The Rhine delta had become a continuous war zone after the Frankish invasion of 274. The Franks became a federation in 358. Roman rule ended in 407, when the Roman soldiers were forced to leave the fortresses on the Rhine river. Bishop Saint Servatius of Tongeren (in present-day Belgium) took refuge in Maastricht in the far south of the Netherlands.
[edit] Dark ages
Only Maastricht was Christian (Roman Catholic) for several centuries. Maastricht belonged to the Frankish empire, which became officially Roman Catholic in 495. Bishop Lambertus changed his see from Maastricht to Liège in present-day Belgium in the end of the 7th century.
[edit] Frankish empire
The Frisian king Radbod was defeated in 689 by the Frankish ruler Pippin of Herstal. Most of the Netherlands were now under Frankish control. Christianization was started immediately by the Anglo-Saxon missionaries Boniface and Willibrord. Willibrord became Bishop of Utrecht. Many Frisians and Saxons (living in the east of the Netherlands) were opposed to the Franks and to Christianity, and they killed missionaries. The Frankish army helped destroy holy trees and replace them by churches. Boniface was killed in 754 by Frisians in Dokkum. The missionaries gradually succeeded in converting the Germanians in the 8th century. Saxon Christians in the east of the Netherlands were Frankish allies during the conquest of Saxony by Charlemagne, which resulted in the complete domination of the Netherlands by the Frankish empire and the Roman Catholic Church. Many pagan practises remained, though, such as amulet worshipping.
[edit] Religious enthusiasm
Central authority was weak in Germany in the Middle Ages, so local counts and lords in the Netherlands had more power. Many of them were very pious and gave their lands to the church rather than to their sons. The Bishop of Utrecht possessed half of the Netherlands in the year 1000. The piety of the bishop declined, as the Holy Roman Emperor began the appointment fighter bishops, or those who commanded armies. The election of bishops became a part of powerplay during the 11th century and beyond, when the Emperor fought against the Pope, also known as the Investiture Controversy. Many parts of the bishopric of Utrecht became independent, or were conquered by neighboring lords. Most of its territory was lost in the 13th century.
The Low countries were very enthusiastic about the crusades, more so than elsewhere in Europe. The Frisian free farmers were the most devout or fanatical, and went in large numbers to Prussia and Jerusalem. Many destitute, young noblemen joined crusades. Criminals took refuge in Prussia this way, such as the murderers of count Floris V in 1296. One count of Holland, William, after defeating his sister for rulership of his county, was well known for his devotion and chivalric behavior. After winning the rulership of his county, he went on many crusades including Prussia and the conquest of Lisbon from the Arabs. He died in Egypt while storming the city of Damietta with his troops.
States began to be established in the Low countries, with laws and central authority. The ideal of purity led to laws against prostitution, gambling, money lending and more. Jews were killed in Zutphen and surroundings after the Black Death. Jews returned to the present Netherlands in the 17th century. It became typical that everybody should live a Christian life in the Low countries. Cities began the building of huge cathedrals. The city of Leiden with 10,000 inhabitants, for instance, needed three large cathedrals to satisfy its religious appetite. Several religious orders entered the Low countries. Monasteries were founded in cities and in the countryside. Monks worked in the governments of the local rulers, making laws and writing chronologies.
[edit] Dawning of renaissance
In the 14th and 15th centuries, religion became less important. The cities began to grow and started to play a role in international trade in the west of the Low Countries. The rulers of the cities began to control politics. They were pragmatic and liberal, and their main political concern was trade. Cities had a pluroformic population with both religious orthodox and liberal citizens. Rich monasteries began to attract liberal-minded people who disliked the dogmatic lifestyle of the traditional monks.
Reformers tried to turn the tide and save morale and religious enthusiasm. One of them was Geert Groote, the founder of a religious order in the Low Countries in the early 15th century.
Another reformer of the time was Erasmus of Rotterdam, the founder of humanism, who became famous all over Europe. He was educated in one of the schools that was founded by Geert Groote. He wished to bring an end to the abuse of positions in the church, and wrote a book on etiquette. He was against war and in favor of the education of all people.
[edit] Reformation and counter-reformation
Reformation started in 1517, when Luther began his campaign to improve the church. The present-day Netherlands was divided in two at that time. The west was a part of the Habsburg Netherlands section of the imperial crown domain of Emperor Charles V, with wealthy cities dominating politics. The east was a continuous battle zone between the armies of Charles, Duke of Guelders and Emperor Charles V. Lutheranism was not widespread in the Netherlands, with only a few rich Flemish traders becoming Lutherans. Charles V was against Protestantism and tried to bring an end to it. The inquisition quickly came to the Netherlands and began its persecutions.
Charles of Gelre remained Roman Catholic as well, but he was less fanatical. In Groningen, there was a public debate between a Lutheran and a Roman Catholic, but this was later forbidden.
A new Protestant religion, that of the Anabaptists, became very popular all over Germany, especially in the counties of Holland and Friesland. Anabaptists were very radical and believed that the apocalypse was very near. They refused to live the old way, and began new communities, creating considerable chaos. Jantje van Leyden from Holland became the ruler of New Jerusalem. Another Dutch anabaptist leader was Jan Matthys from Amsterdam. The German city of Münster was named thus after the Anabaptists seized control of the city. Imperial armies had to reconquer it in 1535. (Ana)baptists survived throughout the centuries and they were recognized by the States-General of the Netherlands in 1578. Institutionalized Dutch baptism stood for a model for English and American baptists.1
Gelre was conquered by Charles V in 1543. Now the whole of the present-day Netherlands was a part of the Habsburg Netherlands. The Habsburg Netherlands was larger, because most of Belgium and parts of Northern France belonged to it. Charles V died in 1556, leaving the Netherlands to his son King Philip II of Spain.
Calvinism became popular in the 1560s, converting both parts of the elite and the common population, mostly in Flanders. The government started harsh prosecution campaigns, which annoyed the majority of the Roman Catholic nobility. They wanted a more liberal attitude from the state and began to complain about the persecutions. Governor Margeret of the Netherlands brought an end to most of the prosecutions in 1566, without consenting the king, who was far away in Spain. The Calvinists came into action and began preaching in the Flemish countryside. This lead to the Beeldenstorm.
Philip II was enraged when he heard the news and ordered harsher persecutions. The nobility that had defeated the Calvinists were prosecuted for high treason. Egmont and Horne were executed in 1568. William the Silent, Prince of Orange, started a civil war against the king of Spain that same year.
[edit] Republic of the Netherlands
Most of the counties of Holland and Zealand were conquered by Calvinists in 1572. Only a few people were calvinist in Holland and Zeeland at that time. The estates of Holland decided to support the prince of Orange. Paulus Buys, land's advocate of Holland was secretly preparing the calvinist takeover of Holland. He and other Roman Catholics turned Protestant in 1572. All churches in the Calvinist territories became Calvinistic. The population wanted to become Calvinistic, but they first had to be converted, which meant that they had to agree with the strict dogmas of the Calvinist Church. Some churches were in liberal Calvinist hands, wanting to open the church for all Christians. This led to widespread confusion among the population. The majority of the population in the county of Holland were not members of a church in the year 1600, and visited orthodox and liberal churches without becoming so. Other religions like Judaism and Roman Catholicism were tolerated. The Roman Catholic Jesuits started large conversion campaigns in the early 17th century, using celebrations, music and education programmes to attract people. Most of the countryside became Roman Catholic in the county of Holland. The cities became flooded with Protestant immigrants from Germany, Flanders and France and developed a Protestant character.
Orthodox Calvinists had no interference from the liberals in the front-line areas next to the Spanish Netherlands. They converted a strip of land from the south west to the north of the Netherlands. This remains Orthodox Protestant until this day. The south east and east of the Netherlands were conquered in the 17th century, and these areas remained Roman Catholic.
The Synod of Dordrecht tried to bring an end to the internal differences within the Calvinist church concerning dogmas. Civil war broke out in the 1610s between orthodox and liberal Calvinists. The (liberal), sovereign estates of Holland decided to step out of the republic of the Netherlands. The orthodox side (prince Maurice of Orange and the other provinces) won, when the official head of state of the county of Holland, Johan van Oldebarnevelt, was executed.
The Calvinist religion became the official religion, and rulers had to be Calvinist. Other religions were tolerated, but couldn't practise their religion in public. Jews had their own laws, which they had to obey, and formed an internal society. The revolution in the 1790s brought emancipation for all religions in the Netherlands.
[edit] 19th century
The Calvinist Church was renamed the Dutch Reformed (Nederlands hervormd) Church when the kingdom of the Netherlands was founded, and King William became the head of the Church. Many orthodox Calvinists thought that the Church was too liberal and they started their own Reformed (gereformeerde) Church. This Church was persecuted by the state and many members fled to the United States.
The Netherlands became semi-democratic in 1848 and all religions were emancipated again.
Orthodox Calvinists were afraid of Roman Catholicism. They were opposed to the influx of Roman Catholic immigrants from Germany and the re-establishment of the Bishops in the Netherlands, although this happened anyway.
The rapid advance of science was seen as a danger to the foundation of religion. Materialism led many Christians and preachers to believe that there was no soul, or that God did not exist in the Biblical sense. This led to further splits within Protestant Churches. Orthodox Protestants forbade liberal views. Many villages in the Netherlands came to have several different Churches. Roman Catholicism remained intact, however.
Less than one percent of the population was atheist outside Friesland. The countryside in Southern Friesland, Zevenwouden, became highly atheistic due to Socialism. The leader of the Social-Democrats, Pieter Jelles Troelstra came from Friesland. At the end of the 19th century, thirty to fifty percent of the population of Zevenwouden was atheist.
Protestants and Roman Catholics formed political parties, which tried to turn the tide. The Conservative Party was thoroughly defeated by the Protestants during the elections of the 1880s, but the Liberals lost their majority of parliamentary seats in the early 1900s. The Christians dominated politics from that moment for more than half a century. Right-wing politicians tried to prevent the cities from becoming atheistic and Socialist by several measures, which worked for a few decades, but were unsuccessful in the long term. Socialists and Socialist newspaper salesmen were beaten up by right-wing mobs, while the police did nothing to help them. Socialist organizations couldn't register and were excluded by authorities for being non-existing organizations. Workers were immediately fired if they openly announced themselves to be Socialist, or if they joined labour unions or other Socialist organizations. The police and the army tried to subdue Socialism until the late 1920s, which let to violent incidents in cities.
[edit] Verzuiling (Pillarization)
The Roman Catholics and Protestants tried to protect their populations by creating their own schools, unions, work places, radio broadcasting companies, newspapers and magazines. They were separated from the rest of society, creating their own subcultures. The socialists did the same, to save their followers from capitalist influences. Liberals were against this, but they only formed a small minority. This phenomenon is called pillarization.
The bureaucracy was dominated by Protestants. Roman Catholics and socialists were discriminated against, although they formed a majority together in parliament. Roman Catholics were allowed to join the government, but the socialists were ignored until the late 1930s. The country was peaceful, but there was a lot of underlying tension. There were a number of incidents: A Roman Catholic boy and a Protestant boy were prevented from playing together by the police. Protestants did not attend funerals of Roman Catholic friends. The annual Easter procession in a certain Roman Catholic village always marching past all the Protestant houses, and all the windows of the houses owned by Protestants were smashed with stones by boys joining the procession.
Atheism grew during the 1920s and 1930s. The socialists in the major cities became atheist. The countryside in east Groningen became Communist. Some communities where ruled directly by the Conservative central government, because the Communists had won the elections.
Many people wanted to bring an end to the pillarization in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Protestants wanted to work together with the Labour party. Communists tried to join with the Labour party as well. There were Christians who tried to unite the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, but they failed to unite them at higher levels.
The main resistance groups during the Nazi German occupation consisted of Orthodox Protestants and Communists, although the other religions and ideologies also had their own resistance groups. Orthodox Protestants saw the interrogation practices from the SS as a test from God and refused to cooperate at all. Calvinist conviction told them to resist the unlawful government and to help the Jews and the resistance. The SS was glad when a church split occurred in 1944 over the question whether the snake talked in the garden of Eden, or whether the Bible should be taken literally or not. The Liberal Protestant vicar that tried to separate his church was driven through the Netherlands in a car from the SS, so he could reach as many people as possible. He thought that the Bible was more important then the Nazi-occupation. A church split came, but it failed to bring an end to Orthodox Protestant participation in the resistance movement.
Most of the Jewish community was exterminated by the Nazis. The Jews in the Netherlands were integrated into the society prior to 1940, although there was some antisemitism. Religiousness and Jewish ethnic feelings were very limited among Dutch Jews. Dutch Jews regarded themselves primarily as Dutch. Class differences were more apparent among Jews than among other Dutch citizens. The Jewish elite voted Conservative Liberal, while the Jewish masses were mainly Social Democratic. One eighth of the population of Amsterdam was Jewish, and they were fully integrated in the Social-Democratic pillar. This full integration was unique in Europe. In February 1941, there was a general strike in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas against the first razzia. This was the largest act of resistance against the persecution of Jews in the Nazi German Empire.
There were 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands in 1940. 20,000 of them were free from persecution, because they were married to non-Jews, or because some of their parents and grandparents were non-Jews. Another 20,000 Jews hid from the Germans. From the 101,000 Jews that were deported, only 1,000 were alive after the war. The percentage of Dutch Jews that were exterminated was much higher than in other countries, including Germany. Reasons for this include the good administration system of the Dutch government and lack of knowledge about the extermination camps. The Dutch population was a relatively rich country with peaceful, law-abiding character.
[edit] Secularization
The extermination of the Dutch Jews became a contentious topic during the 1960s and 1970s. The younger generation blamed the older generation which had not resisted the Nazis and allowed the Jews to die. An ideology of resistance against all authority became very popular. Authority, religion and nationalism were despised by many until the elections of 2002. Freedom became the most important value. Dutch freedom means the freedom to do whatever the individual wants, and not being hindered by others. The consequences of this ideology became apparent during the 1990s, when violence increased. People began to realise that only the government can stop violence from other citizens.
The social revolution of the 1960s brought an end to the Verzuiling (pillarization). Most of the population became non-religious. At first it was very apparent in the Protestant churches. The Liberal Protestants in particular lost a lot of members. The youth no longer wanted to become members. The downsizing of the Roman Catholic Church began later, because people become members at baptism just after birth. Many non-religious Roman Catholics baptized their children, because the grandparents liked it. But the Roman Catholic Church eventually lost more members than the Protestant Church.
This does not mean that a vast majority of the population is atheist. Most of the population believes in God, or some supernatural force, or is undecided. Postmodernism (belief that the truth does not exist) and nihilism (belief that everything is useless) have a significant influence in Dutch society, however, and many influential intellectuals have postmodernistic and nihilistic convictions. The Netherlands are very liberal, which is exemplified by television programs on public television like 'Spuiten en Slikken', which means squirting and swallowing. This program is about sex and drugs. One report in this program was about trying out places like the train and the elevator for outdoor sex. Other hedonists are comedians, like the 'Vliegende Panters' with the Hell's Night Show. The television program 'God Bestaat Niet' (God doesn't exist) resulted in a protest from Christians in 2005. Religion was openly attacked in this program by anti-religious atheistic scientists accompanied by anti-religious sketches of a comedian. In particular a sketch with Allah and Jesus portrayed as dogs led to a lot of criticism. The present prime minister and minister of justice of the Netherlands are conservative Christians who want to make an end to this ridicule of religion.
39% of the population was member of the Roman Catholic church in 1971. In 2005 it was declined to 28%. Mainstream protestants (PKN) declined in the same period from 31% to 12%. Islam increased from 0% to 6%. Small protestant churches had an increase in the amount of members, especially the evangelical churches. Within Western Europe, the Netherlands is average compared with other countries. The Dutch have less members of churches and other religions (44%), but there are more people who are religious outside the main religions (21%).[1]
Islam came to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s. Nowadays 5% of the population is Muslim. The main Islamic immigrants are Turkish, Moroccans, Surinamese and refugees from Iraq, Iran, Bosnia and Afghanistan in particular. The Turkish and Moroccans are by far the largest groups among them. Turkish and Moroccan Islam is very moderate by tradition. Most of the Muslims, some two thirds, became non-practising during the 1980s and 1990s. However, a minority of the Moroccans have become radical Muslims in the Netherlands. Islam is under attack by Dutch nationalists, whom fear that the secularization will be undermined by Islam. Many Dutch fear the Islamic dogma regarding homosexuality, female rights and common daily life. There is also a lot of discrimination among Dutch autochtones, who want the Netherlands to remain white. Some Muslims, espescially young men, respond to this by becoming fundamentalist Muslims. Theo van Gogh was killed in 2004 by a Moroccan fundamentalist Muslim.
The Samen op weg Kerken ("Together on the road churches") wanted to create a Christian unity in the Netherlands. Otherwise there would be many small churches in a country dominated by non-Christians. The idea was that a united Christianity could have a stronger position in Dutch society. The problem was that the Roman Catholic Church did not want to cooperate. Bishops are elected by the Pope, and he did not want the Dutch Catholics to merge with Protestants. The biggest Protestant churches united in 2004 and created the PKN (Protestant Church in the Netherlands). The PKN was formed out of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Reformed churches and two Lutheran churches. Orthodox Protestants split with the majority of the Dutch Reformed Church. This led to the same social problems seen with other church splits: relatives and friends refused to see each other again because of the church split.
The Orthodox Protestant political party SGP has not allowed women to become party members since the it was founded in 1925. Its members want the Netherlands to turn into a theocracy, a country governed by the rules of the Bible. In 2001 the UN declared that the Netherlands was discriminating against women for accepting this political party in parliament, which is not allowed according to the UN Charter of Human Rights. In September 2005, the SGP lost all state subsidies including the salary of the two parliament members after a ruling of a judge. The party was not banned, because the feminists who started the lawsuit were not members of the SGP. The SGP-women believe in the principles of their party.
[edit] Notes
- John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford 1985) 105-107
