Dutch Reformed Christians in the New World
Foppe Ten Hoor was a Dutch immigrant to America, arriving in 1896 and within a few years assuming the role of professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There had been a large influx of Dutch immigrants to America between roughly 1850-1900 (successive waves of immigrants would arrive in the following decades as well), many of whom came out of Reformed churches in the Netherlands. New immigrants found establishing themselves in America to be a challenge—not only did many of the battles that divided the Reformed churches back in the motherland carry over to America, but the Dutch were forced to wage an entirely different (and formidable) battle against the encroaches of American culture into their churches and their lives.
James Bratt writes of this struggle in his excellent book, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture, highlighting Ten Hoor's concerns in particular regarding the gradual Americanization of both the Dutch immigrants and the Reformed churches they established. It would have been difficult to anticipate the challenges they would face in the new world, and soon the Dutch found themselves in a situation which B.K. Kuiper, a contemporary of Ten Hoor, describes as follows:
The overwhelmingly great majority of our fellow-citizens are indifferent or in part even antagonistic to these principles [of the Reformed]. Almost all educational institutions from the highest to the lowest; almost the entire press, daily newspapers as well as periodicals, not only the secular but the religious as well; our courts, our legislatures, organized politics and social life, the pulpits themselves; and therefore almost all public opinion stands arrayed in battle-order against the small circle that yet holds too and nail to the Reformed world-and-life conception.
Like many immigrants in this period, the Dutch had looked to America as a sort of promised land and had been told that there they would find a genuinely Christian land, one that had been spared the athiestic and revolutionary turmoil that had shaped Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. What they found upon arrival, however, was a Christianity that was shallow, individualistic, and concerned with consequence rather than principle.
Ten Hoor, with many other Reformed leaders, were not optimistic about the new context they found themselves in nor the influence this new culture would have on the Reformed churches. Ten Hoor noted the salient features of American Christianity:
doctrinal indifference, passion for 'programs,' impulsive innovation. Evangelicals replaced catechism with Sunday School, Bible study with prayer meetings, doctrinal sermons with topical discourses. Having sacrificed the intellectual in Christianity, they had to resort to the emotions of the ignorant—revivals—or to the tastes of the respectable—'sound organization' pleasing the businessman and 'social service' pleasing his wife. In each case they imitated 'the world,' whether or mass entertainment, of big business with its mergers and boards, or of charities with their assorted benevolences.
In his estimation, it all boiled down to subjectivity and "I-sovereignty." Americans had a remarkable disdain for authority, unless it was their own. For Ten Hoor it seemed that especially confessional authority, but even Scriptural authority, played a secondary role to the whims of the individual. The end goal in American Christianity was not God's glory, but human happiness, reflected in what Ten Hoor observed to be the basic question that animated the American spirit—"Does it pay?"
For Ten Hoor and the rest of the Dutch Reformed in America, then, the challenge was to resist the influence of American culture on Reformed spirituality and theology. How to resist that challenge, however, was a source of constant and heated debate.
This is interesting to me for two reasons. First, being the grandson of Dutch immigrants on both sides of my family, the story of the Dutch Reformed immigrants in North America is my own story. Second, having now spent several months studying the history of Christianity in America, I find Ten Hoor to be very perceptive in his assessment of American Christianity. Growing up, I often thought that the struggle of the Dutch to preserve a culture and tradition was borne out of nothing more than a lingering superiority complex (those of you who have had the misfortune of hearing a Dutchman proclaim, "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!" will undoubtedly feel the same).I have come to realize and appreciate, however, that this struggle goes far deeper than just culture and tradition.
In the end, this was the struggle to preserve a holistic worldview that confessed the lordship of Christ over all. Granted, no unified answer ever came from the Dutch on how to deal with the challenge of American Christianity—some content to withdraw into secluded enclaves that shut the world out entirely, some taking up in earnest the cause of Abraham Kuyper and the neocalvinists to transform culture, and many in between—but there was broad consensus on the problems and concerted efforts among the different parties to address them. Recognizing that to be a Christian meant not only living as a Christian, but also thinking as one, the Dutch were often known for their intellect and wisdom in cultivating both the mind and the heart (the Christian school movement is one such example of these efforts).
The Dutch were well aware that it was a great struggle to be a Christian in this new land. Because Ten Hoor's apt description of American Christianity remains largely true for today, there is much to glean from the insights of the Dutch and their collective struggle to live in a way that acknowledged the sovereignty of God over every part of life. Be sure to read Bratt's book for a much more detailed look at the Dutch experience in America.
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