Summer 2006.
From Holland we made a trip through Central Europe. After our immigration to Canada -in 1983-
this area had opened up, and it was time to take a look behind the former Iron
Curtain. We were still quite Dutch
(read: frugal, or cheap), so we had decided to borrow a tent and go camping. On the first camp ground already we noticed
that almost all the (car) licence plates were Dutch. After visiting Terezin and Prague, we drove
south to meet up with my brother and his family, who were camping at Letni Den,
in the south of the country. This was a
campground for Dutch Christians. We
arrived on a Friday, and I noticed the same day that they were looking for a
speaker for the Sunday service. I
volunteered. I had preached in a
Canadian nursing home and in CRC churches, but I had never preached in the
Dutch language and never dreamt of preaching in the Czech Republic.
I had just
read the best seller “Knielen op een Bed Violen”*, which had been published a
year earlier. In this book, the author
describes his father’s life as he became entangled in an ultra-conservative,
experiential church in central Holland.
In his father’s deep desire to experience the power of God and to please
the brutal leaders of the church, he despised his wife and neglected his
children. Although many readers felt
that the critical analysis was an attack on the church of Christ, I argued that
it was -for a great part- a justified attack, for the father’s ‘faith’ was not
one of thankfulness and love, but one of selfish ambition, where he became a
slave to a system and where spiritual experience was considered of greater
value than the love of Christ. When
churches promote such attitudes, they do not build the Kingdom of God. Near the end of the message I used the term
“ware kerk” (genuine church), and suddenly many eyes lit up. Finally, they could peg this Canadian visitor:
Obviously I had grown up in the Liberated Reformed Church!*
1945 was the
year of Liberation! The Canadians had pushed across the great Dutch rivers to
send the Nazi Germans open and give our ancestors their freedom. It was also the year that a significant
segment of the (Dutch) Reformed Churches broke off to start another
denomination or federation of churches. Let
me try to explain the situation in one paragraph.
At the time
the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands formed a sizeable group with
significant political power. One of its strong leaders had been Dr. Abraham
Kuyper. In his attempt to explain the
relationship between (infant) baptism and regeneration, he proposed the theory
of “presumed regeneration”. Since we
cannot know for sure that (or if) the infant is (or will be) truly regenerated,
we must at that time presume that this is so.**
For a group of young theologians, most notably Klaas Schilder, this was
an unacceptable theory, but Synod (the national leadership convention) decided
to proimote Kuyper’s theory as the only legitimate view: all churches had to
submit to it. Schilder wrote a brochure
against the wrongs of “extra-scriptural binding”. So, when he and his followers
separated in 1945, they had two reasons: (1) rejecting the theory of presumed
regeneration and (2) rejecting the adopted form of church government, where the
big conventions could force the local congregations on such issues.
Now, the
Dutch Confession (Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis) explains that not all
institutions, called ‘church’ are actually ‘churches of Christ’. So, it contrasts the genuine church with the
fake church. The first does all things
(teaching, sacraments, and discipline) right, while the latter does everything
wrong. When you read Paul’s letter to
the Corinthian church or Jesus’ letters to the churches at Sardis and Laodicea
(Rev. 3), you must conclude that some churches are still considered churches of
God, even when there are already many problems.
Obviously, the Dutch Confession portrays the extremes of Good vs. Bad. In
reality, however, there is a gradient: No church is perfect, but some are worse
than others. The ones that have gone
truly bad have ‘lost the Lampstand” and have become ‘Synagogues of Satan’
(Westminster Confession).
Nevertheless,
those who liberated themselves from the “synodical tyranny” to “continue as the
true Reformed churches in The Netherlands” naturally stressed the evil in the
others. Were they not teaching errors in
their ‘presumed regeneration’, and had they not abused church discipline
against Schilder and his friends? In the
heat of the struggle, the perspective was “black & white”: Obviously the
Synodicals formed the fake church, while the Liberated ones constituted the
genuine church.
This
“Liberation” caused a lot of broken relationships. Friends were separated for life, and families
were torn apart. One of my mother’s
aunts decided to stay in the good old Reformed church. She probably did not
understand all the fuss of the quarrelsome relatives. She would downplay the problems at family
gatherings, “After all, we are still brothers and sisters!” My father strongly objected. He made it clear to us that she no longer was
a sister in Christ. When a pastor from a
neighboring church told us in a sermon how he had prayed in the hospital with
someone from the syndical churches, my father made it clear at home that we
must avoid such terrible practices or the promotion of such ideas.
For the next
forty years or so, this kind of denominational pride continued, and any
criticism was vehemently denied. Most
leaders would be sure to toe the line that only we were the Genuine
Church. During the years after the
Liberation, many Dutch folk left for Canada.
When they came here, they found the CRC (Christian Reformed Church),
sister churches of the Kuyper Kerk. It
did not take long for the newly arrived trouble makers to put them for a
choice. Would the CRC accept them as the
only true continuation of the Reformed churches in The Netherlands? In Canada, there had been no push for
Kuyperian theories like ‘presumed regeneration’ and the leaders saw no need to
abandon their Dutch sister church to join the trouble makers. Consequently, the verdict was easy: In the
Canadian Reformed view, by default the CRC had become the Fake Church, in
effect: the Synagogue of Satan. This
attitude is still hard to fight, and in fact, most leaders seem reluctant to
fight the church traditions. Even fairly
recently some Can. Ref. churches would place their young people under
discipline if they chose to have a CRC member as potential marriage partner.
*Jan Siebelink, Knielen op een bed violen, januari
2005
**among the
objectors, some would believe that all baptized children are (or will be)
regenerated (which must imply that they are elect and cannot lose salvation),
while others insisted that there is no actual connection between baptism and
regeneration (even though Titus 3: 5 suggests there is).
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