History of Religion in The Netherlands - 19th Century

19th Century

The 19th century witnessed a rising conflict between Catholics, liberal Calvinists and orthodox Calvinists, and a Dutch solution, pillarization, which lasted until the 1960s.

Invading forces of Revolutionary France in 1795, which established the Batavian Republic, brought equal rights and emancipation for all religions in the Netherlands. In 1813 the Calvinist Republic united with the catholic Southern Netherlands to form the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The union split in 1830 after the Belgian Revolution, which was partially motivated by religious differences between Protestants and Catholics, as well as by Orangists (royalists) and Liberals (mainly from Brussels and Ghent). The position of Catholics of the Kingdom of the Netherlands became worse again. The Catholic hierarchy became forbidden and Catholics were forbidden to hold religious processions in all provinces except for Noord Brabant and Limburg.

The Netherlands was ruled by liberal Calvinist elite, which dominated the bureaucracy and the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1886 a group of orthodox Calvinists, led by Abraham Kuyper, split from the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1892 they founded the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, one of the major neo-Calvinist denominations. Kuyper also organized a whole range of religiously inspired organizations, he was inspired by his conception of the separation of Church and State, sphere sovereignty. He founded an orthodox Calvinist newspaper, labour union, schools, a university and a political party. During this period Catholics began to do the same. The Netherlands became separated between three religious pillars, an orthodox Calvinist, a Catholic and a neutral one. These were subcultures which did not interfere with each other. During the 20th century a separate socialist pillar would also develop. This phenomenon is called pillarization. There was considerable religious tolerance between these subcultures and they cooperated with each other at the level of government.

The social distance grew. People read different newspapers; by the 1930s they listened to different radio programs. Catholic and Protestant children did not play together. Adults did not socialize across religious lines. Marriage across religious lines grew rare.

Jews had become fully integrated into Dutch society after the 1795. Most Jews would later on become aligned within the socialist pillar; many of them became highly secularized and westernized in appearance. They formed a considerable minority: one eighth of the population of Amsterdam was Jewish.