The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Evangelisch-Lutherse Kerk in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden) was a denomination in the Netherlands which under that name existed from 1818 to 2004. In 2004, the denomination became a part of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which is the continuation of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The first Lutheran congregations in the Netherlands were founded in the 16th century, but an organized 'Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands' did not come into being until 1818. The city of Amsterdam was, and still is, the centre of Dutch Lutheranism. Most Lutherans in the Netherlands are descendants of German or Scandinavian merchants, and the Lutheran church has always been quite small.
Because of the urban and internationally oriented membership of the Lutheran Church, liberal influences have always been relatively strong. The church was always counted among the most liberal denominations in the Netherlands. They were among the first churches to ordain women and open homosexuals.
On May 1, 2004, the Lutheran Church, their membership was down to a mere 14,000, when the church merged with the Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.
Famous quotes containing the words evangelical, church, kingdom and/or netherlands:
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:3.
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)