DNK : Documentatieblad voor de Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis na 1800 - Volume 42, Issue 91, 2019

At the end of the Interbellum and in the first years of the German occupation a specific Reformed-Calvinist political action group existed, the Christelijke Nationale Actie (Christian National Action, cna). The founders deliberately did not want to found a political party or movement, but an action group. At first, they intended an interconnection of all four existing protestant parties, but none of them wanted to collaborate. Co-operation bounced off on the interpretation of Article 36 of the Nederlandse Geloofsbelijdenis (Belgic Confession, ngb), concerning the office of civil government and the relation between church and state. The cna decided to join the elections of 1937 as a political party, but did not get enough votes to win a chair in the Parliament. In 1941 de cna was liquidated by the German occupiers.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a left wing public intellectual, who was involved in societal issues, especially questions of peace and war. Adhering a pacifist view, he supported refusal of military service from the midst of the twentieth century. The pacifist peace movement welcomed the views of this famous scientist. This article describes and analyses the reception of Einstein within the Dutch Christian-pacifist organization Church and Peace (Kerk en Vrede). First, attention is given to Einstein’s views and actions regarding refusal of military service, as can be found in the periodical Kerk en Vrede. Secondly, the contacts will be described between the secretary of Church and Peace, Rev. J.B.Th. Hugenholtz, and Einstein. Hugenholtz wanted his support to realize a ‘Peace House’ of pacifist organizations in The Hague. Einstein reacted positively on this request. However, after Hitler came to power in January 1933 Einstein changed his mind. He did not support refusal of military service any longer. This led to a rupture between Einstein and the pacifist peace organizations. Within Church and Peace especially chairman G.J. Heering criticized him sharply. Here the roads parted in a fundamental way.

During the interwar period, the Hungarian theological professor Jenő Sebestyén was a well-known figure in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. He regularly visited the Netherlands and gave lots of lectures to raise money for charity work in Hungary. In 1930 the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam awarded him an honorary doctorate. After his death an In Memoriam appeared in Trouw on 8 June 1950, and on 12 April 1952 George Puchinger dedicated the issue of his magazine Polemios to this Hungarian neo-Calvinist. In the Netherlands there is little attention for him anymore. In this article I deal with three questions: how did Sebestyén come to study neo-Calvinism, what activities did he develop in that context, and what was the result of his efforts?

Since the fifties of the twentieth century Roman-catholic or ecumenical student parishes exist in all university cities in the Netherlands. The history of these parishes goes back to the end of the nineteenth century, when Roman-catholic students started to organize to armor themselves intellectually and morally against antipapism and positivism. All these student associations had a so called ‘moderator’, a spiritual advisor in a leading role. In the first decennia the moderator had a strong influence on the policy and programming of the associations. During the century however the associations grew and also got a social function, becoming full student associations next to the existing student corpora. During World War II most students had to go into hiding in order not to get caught for the German Arbeitseinsatz. The moderators did what they could to keep in touch with them, personally and with stenciled letters, and directed themselves not only to the association members, but to all catholic students.

After the war this orientation to all Catholics was formalized by founding student parishes, and in the sixties moderatorship disappeared. In the early seventies these student parishes stood in the forefront of the renewal movement of Dutch Catholicism. Afterwards, as a consequence of the secularization, the accent of the student chaplains shifted to personal counseling, meditation and other activities concerning personal growth.