Trajecta - Volume 30, Issue 1, 2021

The twentieth century is widely considered a period in which Christendom lost its central position in the West. In the Netherlands, the influx of counter-cultural ideas and beliefs from the 1960s onwards brought about a decline in church membership and voter turnout for Christian parties. Simultaneously, societal critiques grew louder against the state’s accommodation of religion and its privileged positioning of Christianity. This article argues that the societal shifts stemming from the cultural turn of the 1960s, did not result in structural changes in the dialogue between church and state. I use the political negotiations that addressed spiritual care in the Dutch armed forces between 1946 and 1984 as a case study. My focus is on the Humanist League’s drive to obtain for the Humanist Service for Spiritual Care a status equal to that enjoyed by the churches. My analysis shows that the Humanist League mounted a forceful struggle to get access both before and after the 1960s. While the Humanist Service was formally installed in the army in 1967, no structural adaptations to the criterion to distribute positions followed. The ministry of Defense was unprepared to accommodate the humanists, and church-organizations were unwilling to give up their privileged position without a fight. The continuity in Dutch church-state relations and the comparative maneuverability of the churches can be understood by emphasizing the reluctance of state-actors to adapt existing policies. It is the degree of what I call institutional integration of religious organizations with the state which determined the leverage of institutions.

This article deals with the first decades of the Reformed Youth Council of the Netherlands Reformed Church. It was founded in 1941 to challenge young people in local congregations to join the public task of the national Protestant church. Because religious youth work had been left to particular organisations for many years previously, tensions between them and the new umbrella movement had to wait until after World War II to be resolved. Meanwhile, all parties were faced with the general decline of traditional club life and the call for ‘open youth work’ in the form of societal criticism and activism in the ‘roaring sixties’. Curiously, both the orthodox wing of the church and the evangelical Youth for Christ movement succeeded in keeping young people committed to personal faith. Most baby boomers, however, would find their religious place outside organised religion.

In considering Broederlijk Delen, the Flemish Catholic development NGO, it is instructive to understand the role of its Catholic affiliation in its changing interpretation of development aid, and in particular, its evolving ideas on sustainability as the essential ecological principal. From the end of the 1960s to 1990, Broederlijk Delen gradually introduced elements into its discourse and operations that originally were not ecologically inspired, but were later woven into its ideas on sustainability. The question is, did these elements spring from and connect to Catholicism? The article also traces how affiliation with Catholicism hindered ecological concerns by introducing elements at odds with the environmentalism. The notion of moderation deduced from Christian Lent figured centrally in Broederlijk Delen’s evolution in thinking about development. Other elements played a role in Broederlijk Delen’s emerging ideas as well, such as respect for human dignity, land ownership of the poor, and the Appropriate Technology Movement. Overall, religion played a subtle defensive role and was a response to leftist aspects in Broederlijk Delen’s operation when it turned to ecology.

After publication of De Nieuwe Katechismus (translated mostly as The Dutch Catechism, literally: The New Catechism) in 1966, a harsh conflict broke out between the authors of the book and the Vatican. According to censors appointed by the Vatican, the book may have not contained heresy, but some parts were not in accordance with the Church’s teachings. Three years later, an appendix was published. The appendix was accepted by the Dutch episcopacy, responsible for the book, but the authors remained in opposition. They considered De Nieuwe Katechismus to be nothing more than ‘just another catholic book’. Both in older as more recent studies on (Dutch) Catholicism in the sixties, the conflict on the De Nieuwe Katechismus frequently appears as showcase for the troubled relations between the progressive Dutch church province and the orthodox or conservative powers in the Vatican. Meanwhile, both the conception and content of the book are poorly analysed. In this article, I present a contextualised history of the book and the ideas of its authors of what it meant to be catholic in the modern age. Conclusion is that, in order to truly understand both the religious revolution of the sixties and the provenance of important ideas on self-expression and self-fulfilment that shaped our understanding of modernity after the sixties, we ought to take a closer look on new perspectives on modernity and religion that arose in religious communities after the Second World War. From that perspective, the ideas behind the publication of De Nieuwe Katechismus is of greater historiographical relevance then the conflict that broke out after publication.

A new newspaper, the Reformatorisch Dagblad (RD), came into existence in the sixties. The driving force behind its emergence was the dissatisfaction over the social changes at the time. Many Orthodox Protestants of the time had the feeling that trusted certainties, in terms of sexual morality, the Sunday and the authority, have been suddenly relinquished. Media such as Trouw played an important role in this process. Unlike before, this daily newspaper wanted to organise discussions, even about Holy Houses. The RD had to safeguard the certainties and protect the Orthodox Protestant environment from society. Therefore, the symbols of the sixties, such as sports and television, were excluded from the new newspaper. Owing to this disposition and the binding to the Orthodox Protestants, the RD holds a unique position in Dutch journalism. Only by going back to the sixties will it be possible to comprehend this newspaper.

Contrary to popular belief, almost as many churches were built in Flanders after the Second World War as in the first half of the 20th century. Besides obvious stylistic differences, the post-war churches were above all distinctive in terms of their location and typology. In the first place, they were a response to the strong demographic growth and the spatial policy (or rather: the lack thereof) that led to a ubiquitous expansion with new developments in the periphery of the existing cities. In addition, the changing role of the Catholic Church in the post-war society also called for different kind of church buildings; the sense of community became central. In Flanders, this theological, liturgical and typological quest was best expressed in the work of Marc Dessauvage (1931-1981); as unofficial architect of the archdiocese, he built twelve churches and two chapels in ten years. However, the progressive élan embodied in his oeuvre was rather short-lived: from the 1970s onwards, its public support disappeared systematically. Dessauvage’s churches proved to be especially vulnerable in this process: because of their peripheral location, often poor building physics and brutalist style, they were the first victims of the rationalisation of the parish landscape that was imposed from the 1980s onward. This article discusses the Sint-Jozef Arbeiderkerk in Vosselaar, which Dessauvage built between 1959 and 1967. The hypothesis is that this building is not only particularly representative of the cultural context of the 1960s, but can also be considered a pilot project from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. It embodies, like no other, the innovative vision of church-building favoured by the progressive Catholic elite in the context of Vatican II, and also it fulfils a pioneering role today as the first listed parish church in Flanders to be given a radically different purpose. A brief sketch of the genesis of this building and its subsequent experience, together with a critical look at its current adaptive reuse, allows us to make some general statements about the historical significance and future stance of post-conciliar churches, and those of Dessauvage in particular.

More than in music, literature or film, religion faded into the background in the visual arts during the 1960s. The close, longtime connection between Western visual art and Christianity and its visual language seemed to have been lost. In particular in the Netherlands, for a century most loyal to the authority of Rome, religious art was discredited. It was only in the course of the 1980s that interest in religious art returned, albeit modest and cautious. In 2021 there are new opportunities for the visual arts. Although the churches are struggling with empty pews, the church building remains an inspiring environment for artists. In addition, the number of artists with a migration background is increasing. Religion plays an important role within this group, which is reflected in the themes that are depicted.