DNK: Documentatieblad voor de Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis na 1800 - Volume 44, Issue 95, 2021

That horrendous Christmas flood: 1717 Hundred years Christmas flood 1817

Christmas night 1717 a heavy storm pounded on the coast of the Northern Netherlands and East Frisia. The consequences were disastrous. Thousands of residents drowned and extensive damage was done. Reverend Jacobus Isebrandus Harkenroht, who had personally experienced the storm surge, gave a sermon for his East Frisian municipality of Larrelt on Sunday after the flood. He told his congregation that disaster came from God, who punished land and people for their sins. Passionately, he called on his listeners and later his readers to repent. One hundred years later, his confrere Gerrit Johan Friedrich Cramer von Baumgarten commemorated the disaster. He also told his congregation of Middelbert in Groningen that they should see God's hand in the flood. The aim of this pedagogical correction was to show the way to perfection with respect for the laws of nature. Harkenroht’s immanent God had become transcendent.

Eduard Gerdes’ visits of charity homes

One of the most prolific Dutch authors of the nineteenth century is Eduard Gerdes (1821-1898). In an impressive study Christian Philanthropy in the Netherlands. Travel Reminiscences (1880) he presents himself as a visiting investigator of Dutch Christian charitable institutions. In this article his travels are reviewed with as conclusions: (1) ‘Christian’ in the title of the book means ‘orthodox Protestant’, and (2) the reminiscences are partly fictional.

Rev. Leendert Schouten (1828-1905) and his Biblical Museum: On the relationship between faith, gospel proclamation, and scale models of the tabernacle and the temple mount

The Biblical Museum of Schouten is an interesting phenomenon within the context of Dutch Protestantism. The Museum reflects the experience and religious identity of a nineteenth-century pastor in relation to material culture. A seemingly paradoxical relationship that, on closer inspection, fits perfectly with the theological paradigm of prophetic and historical truth of the Bible, as opposed to new methods of exegesis. The Museum also provides insight into a form of Protestantism in which the conversion of Jews and Messianic expectations about the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem are high on the agenda.

The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands were opposed to the theory of evolution, for theological reasons. However, at schools preparing for higher and secondary education biology belonged to the standard curriculum. Christian education was no exception, using textbooks which, even if avoiding any theological controversy, supplied an adequate overview of contemporary biological perceptions of evolution and emergence of species. Whatever the objections they might encounter in the Reformed Churches, pupils in Christian secondary schools in the interwar period would not remain ignorant about basic biological reasoning behind the concept of evolution.