Pillarisation - The Netherlands

The Netherlands

The Netherlands had (at least) three pillars: Protestant, Catholic and Social-democratic. Pillarisation was originally initiated by the neo-Calvinist (gereformeerd) Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP), who based it on their philosophy of sphere sovereignty. The Catholic pillar had the highest degree of organisation, because Catholic clergy promoted the organization of almost the whole life of Catholics in confessional institutions. Yet, the Orthodox and conservative Protestant pillar, and the Socialist pillar that was mainly joined by industrial workers, were nearly as tightly knit.

The Protestant (hervormd) Christian Historical Union (CHU) (formed in 1908) did not organise a pillar of its own but linked itself to the Protestant pillar shaped by the ARP. People who were not associated with one of these pillars, mainly middle and upper class latitudinarian Protestants and atheists arguably set up their own pillar: the liberal or "general" pillar. Ties between general organisations were a lot weaker than within the other three pillars. Liberals actually rejected the voluntary segregation of the society, and denied the existence of a "liberal pillar".

The political parties usually associated with this group were the Free-minded Democratic League (VDB) and Liberal State Party (LSP). Communists, Humanist and ultra-orthodox Protestants also set up similar organisations; however, such groups were a lot smaller.

The development of pillarisation in the Netherlands was favoured by the emancipation of working and lower-middle classes on the one hand, and the execution of elite control on the other hand. The emancipation of the working class led to the establishment of socialist parties, trade unions, media, cooperative shops and collectively organised leisure activities. This "full care" of the socialist movement for its members existed similarly in other European countries. The emancipation of the conservative and often strongly religious lower-middle class fostered the emergence of the Protestant pillar. While the Dutch bourgeoisie was rather liberal and adhered to "enlightened" Protestantism, a large part of the lower middle class embraced a more orthodox Calvinist theology, as it was taught by the preacher Abraham Kuyper.

In Kuyper 1866 founded the gereformeerd ("reformed") current of Protestantism that was both more conservative and more popular with ordinary people than the established Protestant state church of the Netherlands. Kuyper's worldview asserted the principle of "sphere sovereignty", rejecting both ecclesiasticism (rule of the Church over all parts of the society) and statist secularism (rule of the state over all parts of the society), instead he argued that both had their own spheres in which the other had not to interphere. In 1879 he founded the Anti Revolutionary Party as the political wing of his religious movement and core of the Protestant pillar.

At the same time, new and old elites tried to maintain their control over the newly emancipated social groups. For instance, the Catholic clergy set up confessional unions to prevent Catholic workers from joining socialist unions. One reason behind the formation of Christian parties was to counter the feared rise of left-wing mass parties.