Trajecta - Volume 28, Issue 1, 2019

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the rite of circumcision became a hotly debated issue in several Jewish communities across Europe. All European countries followed their own path in the circumcision debates, depending on the country’s political and social environment. The Dutch circumcision debates concentrated exclusively on the medical and hygienic improvement of the rite. Between 1820 and 1890, the quickly expanding medical knowledge had far reaching effects on the rite of circumcision in the Netherlands: the rite was centralized, circumcisers were examined on surgical skills, strict surgical protocols applied to the circumcision procedure, and ultimately, the traditional rite of circumcision was altered to meet the latest medical standards. The growing influence of medicine on the religiously important circumcision led to a heated discussion within the Dutch Jewish community; the circumcision debates offered an arena in which different factions within the Dutch Jewish community fought over the balance between the religious and medical aspects of circumcision. This article discusses the course of the Dutch circumcision debates of the nineteenth century, the influence of international circumcision debates and the changing perception of circumcision within the Dutch Jewish community.

The Jewish Question was one of the central themes in politics in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Netherlands and Germany. By examining the recent historiography on the subject, this article compares the views of Abraham Kuyper and Adolf Stöcker and challenges the general conclusion among researchers that Kuyper turned his back on Stöcker and the Jewish question after 1879. Furthermore, the article explores the ideological (dis)similarities between Kuyper and Stöcker with respect to their theological and political positions on the Jewish question. Finally, the article investigates the way in which Kuyper and Stöcker connected the debate on the Jewish question to the social questions of the day.

The Netherlands remained neutral during the First World War. For this reason, the impact of the war on this country was neglected for a long time. However, in the last decades, the way the war affected the Netherlands has been studied in more detail. Still, the cultural impact of the war has received only little attention. Therefore, this article studies the way in which a group of Catholic intellectuals, involved with the cultural journal De Beiaard, reflected on this war and its outcome. It shows that the First World War was only of limited importance to them. Those authors who did underscore the significance of the conflict did not necessarily do so wholeheartedly. They did so because of a sense of duty. With respect to the reflections on the outcome of war, two elements come to the fore. First, in almost all of the reflections, their connection with Flanders played a role. Several authors pleaded for the equal treatment of the Flemish language. The second element in their reflections is that the outcome of the conflict was predominantly seen from a specifically Dutch Catholic perspective. The Catholic intellectuals involved in De Beiaard either expressed their trust in God or triumphantly and self-consciously claimed that the future was theirs. Their reflections embodied the phase of emancipation that the Dutch Catholics had entered, and the accelerating role of the war within this emancipatory process.

In 1925 Alfons Loogman, a Holy Ghost Father, established the Catholic Swahili monthly paper Rafiki Yetu (‘Our Friend’) in Kenya. In the literature little is known about this journal, although it developed into the most important Catholic Swahili journal of East Africa. Loogman did not get much support of the apostolic vicar and his confreres for his initiative, so the publication of the journal became a personal enterprise. Rafiki Yetu was targeting a broad public, not only Catholics but all African inhabitants of East Africa, no matter their faith. The content of the journal was a mixture of religious and secular topics. The journal had a wide circulation in Kenia, Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Uganda. In contrast to two other Catholic papers, Rafiki Yetu was published in Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. Loogman developed the Rafiki Yetu enterprise into a small printing press. However, Loogman could not realise his dreams of publishing a weekly or even a daily journal because he was transferred to another vicariate and other missionaries continued publishing Rafiki Yetu until 1964.

In recent years, Islamic religious and cultural heritage has enjoyed growing interest in the heritage sector and academia. The attention to this specific heritage can be related to a broader attention to religious heritage and to the theme of migration, both at national and international level. It has often been argued that this heritage has the potential of increasing the social participation of migrants or can serve as an acknowledgment of their presence in society. In our neighboring countries, various heritage projects were initiated in the past, highlighting the migration history of various population groups. In this article, a number of heritage projects concerning the cultural and religious heritage of Muslims in Flanders are discussed against the background of demographic developments and heritage policy, and are framed within a broader international context.

In this article we want to sketch an example of how new alliances between secular and religious conservative actors and activists takes shape in contemporary Dutch society. To do so we focus on the case of a conservative catholic activist organization, Civitas Christiana, and its activist subsidiary, Cultuur Onder Vuur ‘Culture Under Fire’. This organization has become a vocal player in several nation-wide controversies about cultural heritage, religion, and sexuality. Our analysis of Civitas Christiana’s activism shows how religious actors and explicitly secular actors and activists align themselves around issues of cultural heritage, diversity, and sexuality. We argue that these controversies provide new insight into shifts in the politics of secularism and religion in the Netherlands.