Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland

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The Gereformeerde Kerk in Brandwijk . The simple interior design is typical.

The Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN) were from 1892 to May 1, 2004 a reformed church association in the Netherlands. By church you have to imagine a local congregation that has joined forces with others to form the rather loose federation GKN.

The Reformed, more precisely those referred to in Dutch as Reformeerd , are strictly religious Calvinists , so they belong to a Protestant branch of Christianity. They make up around four percent of the Dutch population.

development

Pedigree of the Reformed in the Netherlands

The GKN was significantly stricter in faith and in everyday life than the larger and more liberal former state church Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK). The term reformeerd literally means “reformed”, just like the word verbormd, which consists of Dutch roots . In the course of the 19th century, especially after the Afscheiding of 1834, a distinction was made between the liberal, prominent and strictly religious reformers who, for example, reject Darwinism and strictly observe Sunday rest. The latter means that the reformers do not have fun on Sundays and, for example, do not buy their children ice cream because the ice cream seller works on Sundays. Nevertheless, both directions refer to John Calvin , even if the prominent ones are far more open to other influences.

founding

Abraham Kuyper, key figure in the founding of GKN

The GKN emerged from two church divisions, on the one hand the "old reformed" Afscheiding of 1834 under Hendrik de Cock , on the other hand the Doleantie (from Latin dolere , "mourn" or "lament", because its followers were "saddened" by the development of the reformed church ) from 1886 under the main direction of Abraham Kuyper . They did not agree with the development of the Hervormde Kerk , which had opened up to enlightenment and liberal ideas and at the same time was closely interlinked with the state apparatus and was therefore "bureaucratic". Kuyper, on the other hand, advocated a “pure” Calvinism and freedom of the parishes from state influence, in the sense of his doctrine of sovereignty in eigen kring (“sovereignty in one's own circle”). The Doleantie about joined 300,000 believers in (around 10% of all Protestants).

Kuypers Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dolerende) merged in 1892 with a large part of the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk, which emerged from the Afscheiding of 1834, to form GKN. Together they committed themselves to the “three formulas of unity” of the Reformed: to the Dutch Confession of Faith (Confessio Belgica) from 1561, to the Heidelberg Catechism from 1563 and to the doctrinal rules of Dordrecht from 1618/19.

Spin-offs

Some of them did not join the association and stayed with the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken, which still exists today (2019: around 70,000 members). A distinction must also be made between the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (GG; 2019: around 108,000 members) created in 1907, some of which arose from the Afscheiding of 1834, and some from the Ledeboeriaanern .

The Gereformeerde Kerken vrijgemaakt (GKv; "liberated Reformed churches") split off from the GKN in 1944, rejecting the GKN's synodal constitution and introducing a purely Presbyterian order for the individual parishes. They exist to this day and with 115,000 members (2018) are now the second largest Reformed Church in the Netherlands.

Association for the PKN

A group of 18 theologians and church leaders of the GKN and NHK (Groep van Achttien) suggested as early as 1961 that the two churches should come closer together or unite. Accordingly, the synods of the two church associations decided in 1969 to initiate the seed op path process (“Together on the path”). The GKN itself gradually modernized its theology from around 1970.

After decades of increasing cooperation, Samen op Weg finally resulted in the merger of the NHK and GKN - with the small Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (ELK) as a third partner - to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN). At that time, the GKN had 675,000 members, of whom around 400,000 were regular churchgoers. The GKN members who rejected the merger in 2004 founded the Voortgezette Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (vGKN; "continued GKN") with initially 3400 and now (as of 2018) only a good 2000 members.

politics and society

Former reformed orphanage in Gelders Nijkerk

In politics, the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij established itself in 1879 as the political arm of the reformers . With election results of only around ten percent, it had a far greater influence and provided several prime ministers. After the vote share of the three confessional parties - in addition to the ARP, the significantly larger Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) and the similarly small CHU - had continued to decline, they merged in 1977/80 to form the Christian Democratisch Appèl (CDA).

Compared to the CHU, the ARP was more of the party of the "little people", while the CHU was more aimed at the upper class and the nobility. The CHU thought of defending the Protestant character of the entire country, while the ARP was more skeptical about whether this was realistic given the secularization of the 19th century. The leader of the anti-revolutionaries, Abraham Kuyper , therefore spoke of “sovereignty in one's own circle” (sovereign in one's own kring) . The reformers should build their own education system and above all deal with their own people. The Catholics proceeded in a similar way, later the Socialists. This led to a social particularism that has entered the history books as verzuiling (“piling up”). The population groups in the Netherlands lived side by side, and the cooperation of the respective elites ensured national balance. The heyday of this pillar can be seen in the years 1917 to around 1970. After almost 30 years of "school dispute" with the secular liberals, the religious groups achieved in 1917 that their school system was mainly paid for by the state.

The “pillar” of the Gereformeerden included, in addition to the ARP as party political representation, the denominational Scholen met de Bijbel (“Schools with the Bible”), the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam founded by Kuyper in 1880 , the newspapers De Standaard and Trouw , the Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging (NCRV), the Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond (CNV) trade union and a section of the football hoofd class , which only played on Saturdays due to the strict Sunday rest of the Calvinists, while Catholic or socialist clubs played in the Sunday league. In the 1960s, the church ties of many Dutch people waned and the Verzuiling gradually dissolved.

However, part of the ARP members did not make the merger to CDA with and founded the still pure- Gereformeerde Reformatory Political Federation (RPF), which in the still existing 2001 ChristianUnion opened. It is strictly conservative on religious issues such as abortion or euthanasia, while it tends to be left-wing when it comes to environmental protection and refugees. Even more progressive was the Evangelical People's Party (EPP), which was also shaped by reforming Christians and existed from 1981 to 1991 and mainly advocated “green issues” such as pacifism, criticism of capitalism and the rejection of nuclear energy. It went up in the GroenLinks .

Famous pepole

Formative theologians and church leaders of the GKN were Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), Klaas Schilder (1890–1952; resigned in 1944), Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–1996), Herman Ridderbos (1909–2007) and Harry Kuitert (1924-2017).

Known Gereformeerde outside the theological area are the CDA -Politiker and former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende , the TV presenter Andries Knevel and parliamentary reporter Frits Wester . Formerly Gereformeerd were the writer Maarten 't Hart , the Social Democratic Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan and the TV presenter Jack Spijkerman .

See also