The history of religion in the Netherlands has been characterized by considerable diversity of religious thought and practice. From 1600 until the second half of the 20th century, the north and west had embraced the Protestant Reformation and were Calvinist. The southeast was predominately Catholic.[1] Associated with immigration from Arab world (North Africa and the Middle east) of the 20th century, Muslims and other minority religions were concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods in the cities.
Since the 1960s, the Netherlands has become one of the most secular countries in the Western world. In a December 2014 survey by VU Amsterdam, more atheists (25%) were reported than theists (17%) for the first time in the history of the Netherlands. The majority of the remainder of the population identified as agnostic (31%) or ietsist (27%).[2]
The oldest data on the profession of religion by the inhabitants of the regions that are now the "Netherlands" were passed down by the Romans. Contrary to what ancient sources seem to suggest, the Rhine, which clearly formed the boundary of the Roman Empire, did not form the boundary between residential areas of Celts and Germans. Germans settled south of it (Germani Cisrhenani), and many place names and archaeological finds indicate the presence of Celts north of the Rhine. Between these "Celtic – Germanic peoples" and later the Roman conquerors (romanization) a cultural exchange took place. An adaptation of polytheistic religions and other myths occurred among the various tribes, absorbing influences from Germanic, Celtic and later Roman mythology. Gods such as Nehalennia, Hludana and Sandraudiga are of Celtic or Celto-Germanic, origin; the Germanic people had such gods as Wodan, Donar and Frigg/Freya from Scandinavia. Jupiter, Minerva and Venus were introduced by the Romans. Tacitus described the creation myth of Mannus, a primitive man from which all Germanic tribes were said to have emerged. The Celts and Germans in the Low Countries were also most likely to have had tree shrines, following the example of the Old Norse Yggdrasil and the SaxonIrminsul and Donar's oak. Temples were probably built only during and after the romanization. Examples have been preserved in Empel and Elst.
From the 4th to the 6th century AD, the Great Migration took place, in which the small Celtic-Germanic-Roman tribes in the Low Countries were gradually supplanted by three major Germanic tribes: the Franks, the Frisians and Saxons. Around 500 the Franks, initially residing between the Rhine and the Somme, adopted Christianity, forced by their king Chlodovech. A large part of the area south of the Meuse River was controlled from the early Middle Ages to 1559 by Archdeacon of Kempenland, which was part of the Diocese of Tongeren-Maastricht-Liège. The see of this diocese, successively the cities of Tongeren, Maastricht and Liège, made up the base by which this part of the Netherlands was probably Christianized. According to tradition, the first Bishop of Maastricht, Servatius, was buried in this city in 384 CE. Only Bishop Domitianus (c. 535) is documented as having resided in Maastricht.
At the start of the 6th century, the first (Hiberno-Scottish) missionaries arrived. They were later replaced by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who eventually succeeded in converting most of the inhabitants of the southern Netherlands to Christianity by the 8th century.
From the late 7th century, missionaries coming from England and Ireland, such as Boniface, Lebuinus, Ludger, Plechelm, Willehad and especially Willibrord, sought to convert the inhabitants of the areas north of the Meuse and Rhine rivers to Christianity. They had varying degrees of success, as attested by the (not always reliable) descriptions of their lives that have been written about them. While some sermons yielded success, Frisian king Radboud refused to be baptized by Wulfram. Because he was assured of getting to heaven if he repented and converted, Radboud instead chose an afterlife with his ancestors who, according to Wulfram, were in hell. After the Frisian–Frankish wars (c. 600–793) and the Saxon Wars (772–804), the Low Countries all fell under the rule of the Christian Frankish kings. They wanted their people to be both religious and political subjects, as the kings claimed divine right of leadership. The Old Saxon Baptismal Vow describes how one must renounce his old gods (described as "devils") and submit to the Christian Trinity.
In the 8th century, Anglo-Saxon missionaries such as Boniface continued efforts to Christianize the land inhabited by the Frisians. But Boniface was killed in 754 near Dokkum by the Frisians, because they thought he carried gold. The missionaries gradually succeeded in the conversion of the North in the 8th century. By the beginning of the 9th century, the Saxon-controlled northeastern regions were also subjugated and Christianized by Lebuinus, Plechelmus and Ludgerus. It took until 1000 CE before all pagan people were Christianized, and the Frisian and Saxon religions had died out. Elements of these religions were absorbed into the Christian religion, which is syncretic. During the following centuries, Catholic Christianity was the main religion in the Netherlands, but other practices likely survived in the conservative societies of the villages.
The Old Saxon Baptismal Vow: "Forsachistu diobolae.." (Forsake devils) and "gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer" (believe in god almighty father). Left caption in a later writing: "Abrinuciatio diaboli lingua Teotisca veter." = (abjuration of the devil in Old German). Under the Baptismal Vow in Latin is an enumeration of the first 20 practices in the Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum.
Religious life was ubiquitous in medieval society. Important abbeys such Rolduc, Susteren, Sint Odiliënberg and Egmond were highly influential in the countryside. They were centers of learning and literacy. In the Christian centers of Utrecht and Maastricht, powerful chapters were established. From the 13th century, monastic and knightly orders settled in many cities, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans and knights of the Teutonic Order. They also took part in many of the 12th- and 13th-century crusades to the Holy Land (see Frisian participation in the Crusades).
Where justice until the 12th century existed largely in actions by kangaroo courts, which often administered trial by ordeal to establish a person's guilt or innocence, in the course of the 12th century, the ecclesiastical and secular powers took over more control of the justice system. The church rules (in particular by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215) and the monarchs maintained the order. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Devotio Moderna (among others Geert Groote and Thomas à Kempis) created a spiritual innovation. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the first calls were heard for religious reform from within the Catholic Church. Geert Groote established the Brethren of the Common Life, an influential mystical order. The influence of humanism (particularly through the teachings of Erasmus and Dirck Coornhert) changed the Dutch world. It began to shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview.
Catholicism dominated Dutch religion until the early 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation began to develop.[3]Lutheranism did not gain much support among the Dutch, but Calvinism, introduced two decades later, did. It began its spread in the Westhoek and the County of Flanders, where secret sermons in Dutch, called hagenpreken ("hedgerow orations"), were held outdoors. Gradually discontent among the Dutch grew, and erupted in 1566 with the so-called Beeldenstorm, a surge of iconoclasm. This quickly spread among all Dutch regions and finally resulted in what would become the Dutch revolt from Catholicism and Spanish control. During the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, an independent Dutch religious tradition began to take shape in the northern parts of the independent Netherlands.
The most prominent Dutch theologian was the humanistDesiderius Erasmus. He was critical of the abuses within the Catholic Church and called for reform, but he kept his distance from Martin Luther and Philip Melancthon. He continued to recognise the authority of the Pope. Erasmus emphasized a middle way, with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, and rejected Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus therefore remained a Catholic all his life. In relation to clerical abuses in the Church, Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church from within. He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Calvinist Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.[4]
The 16th and 17th century were characterized by the Protestant Reformation, which greatly influenced the history of the Netherlands, especially in western and northern areas of the country. They also had influence with the eastern English shires, with which they were in contact through trading across the North Sea. The first wave of Reformation, initiated by Luther, did not come to the Netherlands.
The second wave of the Protestant Reformation, Anabaptism, became very popular in the counties of Holland and Friesland. Anabaptism was part of the Radical Reformation, a response to corruption both in the Catholic Church and in the expanding MagisterialProtestant movement. They refused to live the old way, and began new communities, which led to intense persecution. A prominent Dutch Anabaptist was Menno Simons, who initiated the Mennonite church. Another Anabaptist group attempted to take control of Amsterdam in 1535, in what is referred to as the Wederdopersoproer but was violently repressed and all participants killed. The action was inspired by the Annabaptist dominion of Münster one year earlier when Anabaptists, some from the Netherlands, took control of Münster. This action ended after a lengthy siege and the execution of the self proclaimed king Jantje van Leyden and other leaders.[citation needed] Anabaptists survived throughout the centuries and they were recognized by the States-General of the Netherlands in 1578. Institutionalized Dutch baptism was a model for both English and American Baptists.
The third wave of the Reformation, Calvinism, arrived in the Netherlands in the 1540s. Part of both the elite and commoners, mostly in Flanders, adopted this influence. Then in control of the Low Countries, the Spanish government, under Philip II started harsh persecution campaigns, supported by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church, as Protestantism was seen as threatening the royal government. In reaction to this persecution, the Calvinists rebelled. In the Beeldenstorm in 1566, they conducted iconoclasm, destroying statues, paintings, and other religious depictions and artifacts in churches. Also in 1566 William the Silent, Prince of Orange, a convert to Calvinism, started the Eighty Years' War to liberate the Calvinist Dutch from the Catholic Spaniards.
The counties of Holland and Zeeland were conquered by Calvinists in 1572. Numerous residents were already Calvinist in Holland and Zeeland at that time, but the other states were still almost entirely Catholic. The estates of Holland, led by Paulus Buys, decided to support William the Silent. All churches in the Calvinist territories became Calvinist and most of the population in these territories converted to or were forced to convert to Calvinism. Because the Netherlands had gained independence from Spain over both political and religious issues, it chose to practice certain forms of tolerance toward people of certain other religions. It opened its borders for religious dissenters (Protestants and Jews) from elsewhere. For instance, René Descartes, a French Catholic, lived in the Netherlands for most of his adult life. As the Reformation reached England, some Puritans fled from persecution to Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. (Jews had been expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th and 16th centuries if they refused to convert to Catholicism, and were prohibited from England.) But the Calvinist-dominated areas maintained persecution and later discrimination against native Dutch Catholics.
Philip II of Spain was the hereditary ruler of the Netherlands. As a devout Catholic, Philip believed he was obligated to fight Protestantism, which also threatened his rule. After the Beeldenstorm, he sent troops to suppress Protestantism in the Netherlands. The Spanish conquered the southern Netherlands (Flanders and Brabant). Protestants in this area, many of them prosperous merchants, fled en masse to Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. An extreme example was the city of Hondschoote, where the population dropped from 18,000 to 385 inhabitants. Antwerp, formerly the most powerful city in the Low Countries, lost more than half its residents to this exodus.[5]
In the Calvinist-controlled northern counties, many of the remaining Catholics were tending toward converting to Protestantism for temporal gain, to survive in the changed society. In the early 17th century, the Roman Catholic Jesuits launched a Counter Reformation in order to rekindle faith among Catholics. In those areas where the Jesuits could operate, the Dutch Catholics were supported in their faith and some Calvinists reverted to Catholicism. However, the number of Catholics dwindled due to the lack of priests, especially in rural areas of Gelre, Overijssel, Groningen, and Friesland.
At the same time, the larger western cities received an influx of Protestant immigrants from Germany, Flanders, and France and developed a Protestant character. Strict Calvinists converted a belt of land from the southwest (the province of Zeeland), via the Veluwe, to the north of the Netherlands (to the city of Staphorst) during the 17th and even as late as the 18th centuries. This remains strictly Calvinist until this day.
During the Twelve Years' Truce (between 1609 and 1621) in the Eighty Years' War, a civil war along religious lines developed in the Netherlands. The Synod of Dort tried to bring an end to an internal theological conflict within the Calvinist church between two tendencies of Calvinism: the liberal Arminians or Remonstrants and the strict Gomarists or Contra-Remonstrants. Civil war broke out in the 1610s between strict and liberal Calvinists. The liberal States of Holland left the Republic. The strict Calvinist side won (Prince Maurice of Orange and the other provinces) and Johan van Oldebarnevelt, the official head of state of the County of Holland, was executed. Calvinism became the de factostate religion. Only Calvinists (and, in some cases, Jews) were allowed to hold political office. Other Christian denominations were mostly tolerated, although discriminated against, and believers were not allowed to practice their religion in public. Judaism was allowed in public, and Lutheranism only in larger cities. It was permitted only on the condition of the congregations maintaining Calvinist church interior styles, without having crucifixes, as were still displayed in Scandinavian Lutheran cathedrals.
In 1648, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire recognized the independence of the Netherlands in the Treaty of Westphalia. The Netherlands included the "Seven Provinces" of the Dutch Republic, which were Protestant, but also a Roman Catholic area. This Generaliteitsland was governed by the States-General; it roughly included the current provinces of North Brabant and Limburg. The Netherlands became known among dissenting Anglicans (such as Puritans), many Protestants, and Jews for its relative religious tolerance; it became a refuge for the persecuted and a home for many of these immigrants.
English Puritans in Amsterdam formed what was known as the "Ancient Church of Amsterdam", whose leaders included wealthy merchants such as Edward Bennett (1577-bef. 1651), a member of the Virginia Company and later developer of a large plantation in the colony of Virginia beginning in the mid-1620s. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the proportion of first-generation immigrants from outside the Netherlands among the population of Amsterdam was nearly 50%.[citation needed] Many Jews, especially from Antwerp, migrated to Amsterdam. Jews governed their communities under their own laws and formed a separate society. The Netherlands hosted religious refugees, including Puritans from England (the most famous of the latter were the Pilgrims, who in the early 17th century emigrated to what became the Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America). Protestant Huguenots from France fled to Amsterdam after repeal in 1689 of the Edict of Nantes and renewed persecution and attacks from Catholics.
19th century
Abraham KuyperReligious division in the Netherlands in 1849. Catholicism holds a majority in green areas. Protestantism holds a majority in red areas.
During the 19th century, there was a rising conflict among Catholics, liberal Calvinists, and orthodox Calvinists. The Dutch solution, known as pillarization, lasted until the 1960s.
The union split in 1830 after the Belgian Revolution, which was partially motivated by religious differences between Protestants and Catholics, as well as by the political split between Orangists (royalists) and Liberals (mainly from Brussels and Ghent). The position of Catholics in the Kingdom of the Netherlands worsened. The Catholic episcopal hierarchy was forbidden and Catholics were forbidden to hold religious processions in all provinces except for Noord Brabant and Limburg.
A liberal Calvinist elite dominated the Netherlands for a period, including the national bureaucracy and the Dutch Reformed Church. An opposition movement developed. In 1834, led by Rev. Hendrik de Cock, a group seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church in what was known as the Afscheiding.
During this period Catholics began to develop their own non-governmental institutions. The Netherlands became dominated among three religious pillars, an orthodox Calvinist, a Catholic, and a neutral one. These subcultures generally did not interfere with each other. During the 20th century, a separate socialist pillar would also develop. This phenomenon is called pillarization. There was considerable religious tolerance among these subcultures, and they cooperated with each other at the level of government.
The social distance grew. People read different newspapers; by the 1930s they listened to different radio programs. Catholic and Protestant children generally lived in different neighborhoods and provinces, and did not play together. Adults did not socialize across religious lines. Marriage across religious lines grew rare.[7]
Jews had become fully integrated into Dutch society after 1795. Most Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries became later become aligned within the socialist pillar, many became highly secularized and adopted mainstream dress rather than that associated with Orthodox Judaism. They formed a considerable minority, especially in certain cities: one-eighth of the population of Amsterdam was Jewish.[8]
In 1940, the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany. Their forces rounded up and deported most of the Dutch Jewish community to concentration camps in eastern Europe, exterminating them.
In February 1941 after Nazi occupation, a general strike took place in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas against the first razzia, a raid to collect Jews. This was the largest act of resistance in the Netherlands against the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. The main resistance groups were composed of conservative Calvinists, Communists and Catholics, while liberals and others were underrepresented. An important action of the resistance movement was hiding Jews from Nazis.
There were 140,000 Jews recorded in 1940 in the Netherlands. 20,000 of them were free from persecution, because they were married to Aryans, or because some of their parents and grandparents were non-Jews. Another 20,000 Jews hid from the Germans. Of the 101,000 Jews that the Nazis deported, only 1,000 returned after the war.[citation needed] The percentage of Dutch Jews who were exterminated was much higher than in other countries, including Germany.
Other religion, including other Protestant denominations (3.3%)
Until late into the 20th century, the predominant religion in the Netherlands was Christianity. Although religious diversity remains, there has been a decline in religious adherence and practice in the 21st century. In 2006, 34 percent of the Dutch population identified as Christian church members. In 2015, that had declined to about 25 percent (11.7% Roman Catholic, 8.6% PKN, 4.2% other small Protestant denominations). Another 5 percent is Muslim (primarily immigrants or descendants of majority-Islam states), and 2 percent adheres to Hinduism or Buddhism. These percentages are based on independent in-depth interviewing by Radboud University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.[11]
In 2015, approximately 67.8% of the population claimed no religious affiliation, up from 61% in 2006, 53% in 1996, 43% 1979, and 33% in 1966.[12] In 2007, the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (Social and Cultural Planning Agency, SCP) expected the number of non-affiliated Dutch to be at 72% in 2020.[13]
Secularization, or the decline in religious adherence and practice, first became noticeable after 1960 in the Protestant rural provinces of Friesland and Groningen. It became more obvious in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the other large cities in the west. Finally, the Catholic south also showed declines in religious practice and belief. By contrast, there has been a religious revival in the Protestant Bible Belt of the Netherlands. In addition, there has been growth of Hindu and Muslim communities as a result of immigration and higher birth rates.[14][15]
After the Second World War, the major religions began to decline. With higher immigration of workers from North Africa and the Mideast, the number of people practicing Islam increased. During the 1960s and 1970s, the traditional pillarization began to weaken and the population became less religious. In 1971, 39% of the Dutch population were members of the Roman Catholic Church; by 2014, their share of the population had dropped to 23.3% (church-provided KASKI data). The proportion of adherents of mainline Protestantism declined in the same period from 31% to 10% (church-provided KASKI data).[16] KASKI (Katholiek Sociaal-Kerkelijk Insituut / Catholic Social-Ecclesiastical Institute[17]) is based on self-reported information by the Catholic and Protestant churches.[18] They reported a higher number of church members than what was found by independent in-depth interviewing by Radboud University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Some of that may be attributed to methods of data collection. According tot KASKI, the total number of members of Christian groups in the Netherlands has decreased from approximately 7,013,163 (43.22% overall population) in 2003 to 5,730,852 (34.15% overall population) in 2013.[19] An additional 4.2% of the population adhere to other Protestant churches. With 32.2% of the Dutch identifying as adhering to a religion, among which 25% adhere to Christianity and 5% to Islam, the Netherlands is one of the least religious countries of Europe.
During the same period, Islam increased from 0% to 5%. The main Islamic immigrants came from Surinam and Indonesia, as a result of decolonization; Turkey and Morocco, as migrant workers; and Iraq, Iran, Bosnia and Afghanistan as political refugees. In the early 21st century, religious tensions between native Dutch people and migrant Muslims have increased in some areas. The popular politician Pim Fortuyn provoked controversy by defending the Dutch liberal culture against what he considered a "backward religion", conservative Islam.[20] Stricter immigration laws were enacted. Religious tensions heightened after film director Theo van Gogh was killed in 2004 by Mohammed Bouyeri.
A December 2014 survey by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam concluded that, for the first time, there were more atheists (25%) than theists (17%) in the Netherlands. The majority of the population identified as agnostic (31%) or ietsistic (27%).[2]
In the 21st century, a large majority of the Dutch population believes in the separation of church and state, that is, that religion should not play a decisive role in politics or public education. Religion is also decreasingly seen as a social binder.[11] Religion in the Netherlands is generally considered a personal matter, which is not supposed to be propagated in public.[21]
Atheism, ietsism, agnosticism, and Christian atheism keep rising; the first three being widely accepted and the last being more or less considered to be non-controversial. Among those who adhere to Christianity, there are high percentages of atheists, agnostics and ietsists, since affiliation with a Christian denomination is also used in a way of cultural identification in the different parts (especially the south) of the Netherlands.[22] According to research in 2015, a more generalized rise in individual spirituality has ended. In 2006, 40 percent of respondents considered themselves spiritual. But in 2015, this had dropped to 31 percent.[11]
According to the CBS in 2018, 53% of the Dutch were religiously unaffiliated, 37% were Christians (out of whom 22% registered Catholics, 15% Protestants – 6% PKN + 6% hervormd + 3% gereformeerd), 5% were Muslims, and 5% adherents of other religions.[23]
Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Western Church. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed, Presbyterian, and Congregational traditions, as well as parts of the Anglican and Baptist traditions.
The history of the Netherlands extends back long before the founding of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon. For thousands of years, people have been living together around the river deltas of this section of the North Sea coast. Records begin with the four centuries during which the region formed a militarized border zone of the Roman Empire. As the Western Roman Empire collapsed and the Middle Ages began, three dominant Germanic peoples coalesced in the area – Frisians in the north and coastal areas, Low Saxons in the northeast, and the Franks to the south. By 800, the Frankish Carolingian dynasty had once again integrated the area into an empire covering a large part of Western Europe. The region was part of the duchy of Lower Lotharingia within the Holy Roman Empire, but neither the empire nor the duchy were governed in a centralized manner. For several centuries, medieval lordships such as Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Guelders and others held a changing patchwork of territories.
The culture of the Netherlands is diverse, reflecting regional differences as well as the foreign influences built up by centuries of the Dutch people's mercantile and explorative spirit. The Netherlands and its people have long played an important role as centre of cultural liberalism and tolerance. The Dutch Golden Age is popularly regarded as its zenith.
The Dutch Reformed Church was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal family and the foremost Protestant denomination until 2004, the year it helped found and merged into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. It was the larger of the two major Reformed denominations, after the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was founded in 1892. It spread to the United States, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and various other world regions through Dutch colonization. Allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church was a common feature among Dutch immigrant communities around the world and became a crucial part of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa.
Christianity is the largest religion in Germany. It was introduced to the area of modern Germany by 300 AD, while parts of that area belonged to the Roman Empire, and later, when Franks and other Germanic tribes converted to Christianity from the fifth century onwards. The area became fully Christianized by the time of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth century. After the Reformation started by Martin Luther in the early 16th century, many people left the Catholic Church and became Protestant, mainly Lutheran and Calvinist. In the 17th and 18th centuries, German cities also became hubs of heretical and sometimes anti-religious freethinking, challenging the influence of religion and contributing to the spread of secular thinking about morality across Germany and Europe.
Anti-Protestantism is bias, hatred or distrust against some or all branches of Protestantism and/or its followers, especially when amplified in legal, political, ethic or military measures.
Protestantism originated from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The term Protestant comes from the Protestation at Speyer in 1529, where the nobility protested against enforcement of the Edict of Worms which subjected advocates of Lutheranism to forfeit all of their property. However, the theological underpinnings go back much further, as Protestant theologians of the time cited both Church Fathers and the Apostles to justify their choices and formulations. The earliest origin of Protestantism is controversial; with some Protestants today claiming origin back to people in the early church deemed heretical such as Jovinian and Vigilantius.
The Catholic Church in the Netherlands is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Its primate is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, since 2008 Willem Jacobus Eijk. In 2015 Catholicism was the single largest religion of the Netherlands, forming some 23% of the Dutch people, based on in-depth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s.
Religion in the Netherlands was dominated by Christianity between the 10th and 20th centuries. In the late 19th century, roughly 60% of the population was Calvinist and 35% was Catholic. Also, until the Holocaust, there was a noticeable Jewish minority. Since world war II, there has been a significant decline in Catholic and especially Protestant Christianity, with Protestantism declining to such a degree that Catholicism became the foremost form of the Christian religion. The majority of the Dutch population is secular. Relatively sizable Muslim and Hindu minorities also exist.
Religion in Austria is predominantly Christianity, adhered to by 68.2% of the country's population according to the 2021 national survey conducted by Statistics Austria. Among Christians, 80.9% were Catholics, 7.2% were Orthodox Christians, 5.6% were Protestants, while the remaining 6.2% were other Christians, belonging to other denominations of the religion or not affiliated to any denomination. In the same census, 8.3% of the Austrians declared that their religion was Islam, 1.2% declared to believe in other non-Christian religions, and 22.4% declared they did not belong to any religion, denomination or religious community.
Religion in Switzerland is predominantly Christianity. According to the national survey of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, in 2022, Christians accounted for 58.2% of the resident population, of whom 32.1% were Catholics, 20.5% were Swiss Protestants, and 5.6% were followers of other Christian denominations. The proportion of Christians has declined significantly since 1980, when they constituted about 94% of the population; during the same timespan, unaffiliated Swiss residents have grown from about 4% to 31% of the population, and people professing non-Christian religions have grown from about 1% to 7.2% of the population. In 2020, according to church registers, 35.2% of the resident population were registered members of the country's Catholic Church, while 23.3% were registered members of the Protestant Church of Switzerland.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe. Christianity has been practiced in Europe since the first century, and a number of the Pauline Epistles were addressed to Christians living in Greece, as well as other parts of the Roman Empire.
Religion in Sweden has, over the years, become increasingly diverse. Christianity was the religion of virtually all of the Swedish population from the 12th to the early 20th century, but it has rapidly declined throughout the late 20th and early 21st century.
Reformed Christianity originated with the Reformation in Switzerland when Huldrych Zwingli began preaching what would become the first form of the Reformed doctrine in Zürich in 1519.
Protestantism in France has existed in its various forms, starting with Calvinism and Lutheranism since the Protestant Reformation. John Calvin was a Frenchman, as were numerous other Protestant Reformers including William Farel, Pierre Viret and Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor in Geneva. Peter Waldo was a merchant from Lyon, who founded a pre-Protestant group, the Waldensians. Martin Bucer was born a German in Alsace, which historically belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, but now belongs to France.
Religion in Hungary is varied, with Christianity being the largest religion. In the national census of 2022, 42.5% of the population identified themselves as Christians, of whom 29.2% were adherents of Catholicism, 9.8% of Calvinism, 1.8% of Lutheranism, 0.2% of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and 1.5% of other Christian denominations. 1.3% of the population identified themselves as adherents of other religions; minorities practising Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, the Baháʼí Faith, Taoism, Ősmagyar vallás and other Neopaganisms, and New Age, are present in the country. At the same time, 40.1% of the population did not answer, not identifying their beliefs or non-beliefs, while 16.1% identified themselves as not religious.
In 16th-century Christianity, Protestantism came to the forefront and marked a significant change in the Christian world.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Christianity:
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners by grace through faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five solae summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism.
Sectarian violence among Christians is a recurring phenomenon, in which Christians engage in a form of communal violence known as sectarian violence. This form of violence can frequently be attributed to differences of religious beliefs between sects of Christianity (sectarianism). Sectarian violence among Christians was common, especially during late antiquity, and the years surrounding the protestant reformation, in which a German monk who was named Martin Luther disputed some of the Catholic Church's practices; particularly the doctrine of Indulgences, and it was crucial in the formation of a new sect of Christianity known as Protestantism. During the latter half of the Renaissance was when sectarianism related violence was most common among Christians. Conflicts like the European wars of religion or Dutch Revolt ravaged Western Europe. In France there were the French Wars of Religion and in the United Kingdom anti-Catholic hate was heightened by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. And while sectarian violence may seem like an archaic footnote today, sectarian violence among Christians still persists in the modern world with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan perpetuating violence among Catholics.
↑ Manfred Hoffmann, "Faith and Piety in Erasmus's Thought," Sixteenth Century Journal (1989) 20#2 pp 241–258
↑ Israel, Jonathan Irvine (1995) The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806. ISBN0-19-820734-4
↑ James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat (2012)
↑ On the decline of intermarriage see Erik Beekink, et al. "Changes in Choice of Spouse as an Indicator of a Society in a State of Transition: Woerden, 1830–1930," Historical Social Research (1998) 23#1 pp 231–253.
↑ Yosef Kaplan, The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History (2008)
1 2 God in Nederland 1966–2015, dr. Ton Bernts & dr. ir. Joantine Berghuijs, Uitgeverij Ten Have, ISBN978-902590524-8
↑ God in Nederland 1966–2015, dr. Ton Bernts, dr. ir. Joantine Berghuijs, Publisher: Uitgeverij Ten Have, ISBN9789025905248
↑ Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, God in Nederland (2006/2007)
↑ Hans Knippenberg, "Secularization in the Netherlands in its historical and geographical dimensions," GeoJournal (1998) 45#3 pp 209–220. onlineArchived 2 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Tomáš Sobotka and Feray Adigüzel, "Religiosity and spatial demographic differences in the Netherlands" (2002) onlineArchived 15 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine
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