History
When Flanders and North Brabant were reconquered by the Spanish army during the Eighty Years’ War, their Protestant inhabitants were required to either convert to Catholicism or leave. Many emigrated north of the border, particularly during the Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609 – 1621. Many of them later became staunch supporters of the pietist movement known as the nadere reformatie (further reformation). Following the 1832 schism, known as the Afscheiding (“Secession”) and the 1886 schism, Doleantie (“Sorrow”) led by Abraham Kuyper, they left the mainstream Dutch Reformed Church and founded their own, more conservative congregations, the most notable of which are the Christian Reformed Churches, the Restored Reformed Church and the Reformed Congregations (“Gereformeerde Gemeenten”), known colloquially as zwarte-kousenkerken (“black stockings churches”).
The Bible Belt differs in many aspects (amongst them a regular Sunday church attendance - often twice on a Sunday) from the traditionally Catholic provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg to the south (where Sunday church attendance averages between a mere 2% to 3% of the population) and northern parts of the Netherlands, which are traditionally mainline Protestant (dominated by the Protestant Church in the Netherlands) and increasingly secular, with similarly low church attendance figures.
Read more about this topic: Bible Belt (Netherlands)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)