Dutch Neo-Calvinism & the Secession Churches

In 1834 a village pastor in Groningen, Hendrik de Cock, was suspended for preaching the old Reformed doctrines against what he took to be the liberalism of the national church, and his congregation walked out with him. The Afscheiding that followed was a secession of mostly poor and rural people, who were fined and had soldiers billeted on them for holding illegal services. Many emigrated, and in 1857 their American cousins founded what became the Christian Reformed Church in North America. Fifty years after de Cock, Abraham Kuyper — journalist, politician, theologian — led a second and larger secession, the Doleantie of 1886, and in 1892 brought most of the two streams together. Kuyper's idea was always bigger than a church. That Christ's claim covers every sphere of life, each with its own proper authority, so believers should build their own schools, university, newspaper and political party rather than either withdraw from society or dissolve into it. He founded the Free University in Amsterdam in 1880 and served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905.