Post by pieter on Jan 1, 2013 16:16:49 GMT -7
The Bible Belt
The Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the south-eastern and south-central United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. The Bible Belt consists of much of the Southern United States. During the colonial period (1607–1776), the South was a stronghold of the Anglican church. Its transition to a stronghold of non-Anglican Protestantism occurred gradually over the next century as a series of religious revival movements, many associated with the Baptist denomination, gained great popularity in the region.
The region is usually contrasted with the mainline Protestantism and Catholicism of the northeastern United States, the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes, the Mormon Corridor in Utah and southern Idaho, and the relatively secular western United States. Whereas the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious is the New England state of Vermont at 34%, in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 6%. Mississippi has the highest proportion of Baptists, at 55%. The earliest known usage of the term "Bible Belt" was by American journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken, who in 1924 wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune: "The old game, I suspect, is beginning to play out in the Bible Belt." Mencken claimed the term as his invention in 1927.
The Bible Belt in the USA
Geography
The name "Bible Belt" has been applied historically to the South and parts of the Midwest, but is more commonly identified with the South. In a 1961 study, Wilbur Zelinsky delineated the region as the area in which denominations are the predominant religious affiliation. The region thus defined included most of the Southern United States, including most of Texas and Oklahoma in the southwest, and in the states south of the Ohio River, and extending east to include central West Virginia, Virginia south of Northern Virginia, and parts of Maryland. In addition, the Bible Belt covers parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. A 1978 study by Charles Heatwole identified the Bible Belt as the region dominated by 24 fundamentalist Protestant denominations, corresponding to essentially the same area mapped by Zielinski.
Tweedie (1978) defines the Bible Belt in terms of the audience for religious television. He finds two belts: one more eastern that stretches from central Florida through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and into Virginia; and another that is more western, moving from central Texas to the Dakotas, and concentrated in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Mississippi.
The Bible Belt in the Netherlands
In The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, De Bijbelgordel stretches from the provinces of Zeeland to Overijssel. It was essentially the border between the Protestant and Catholic parts of the Netherlands after the Protestant Reformation (around 1560). The Dutch Bible Belt developed more explicitly in the 19th century. In the Bijbelgordel, the popular SGP favored a theocracy, and women were denied full party membership and the ability to be political representatives, although this was changed in respectively 1996 and 2012 when women were allowed to be members of the SGP (the Reformed Political Party) and the party granted passive suffrage to its female members. Immigrants from this area to the U.S. formed the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
In The United Kingdom
Scotland
In Scotland the Highlands and Islands are a stronghold of Christianity, both in the Church of Scotland and in smaller Presbyterian denominations such as the Free Church of Scotland. However, neither region is referred to as a 'bible belt'.
Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, the County Antrim area stretching from roughly Portrush to Larne and centered in the area of Ballymena is often referred to as a Bible Belt. This is because the area is heavily Protestant with a large evangelical community. From 1970 to 2010, the MP for North Antrim was Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian minister well known for his theological fundamentalism. The town of Ballymena, the largest town in the constituency, is often referred to as the "buckle" of the Bible Belt.
Comment Pieter: The Northern-Irish Bible could be connected to the Dutch biblebelt, because the Protestant presence in Northern-Ireland has to do with a Dutch king of England which conquered Northern-Ireland. The Orange marches of the Protestants in Northern-Ireland are directly linked to that past, because that Orange color is the color of the Dutch Royal family. The Dutch-born Protestant King of England, Ireland and Scotland William of Orange, defeated the army of Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_III_of_England )
Counter-revolutionary or anti-revolutionairy christian conservatives
The word "counterrevolutionary" originally refers to thinkers who opposed themselves to the 1789 French Revolution, such as Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald or, later, Charles Maurras, the founder of the Action française monarchist movement. Henceforth, it is used in France to qualify political movements that refuse the legacy of the 1789 Revolution, which historian René Rémond has referred to as légitimistes. Thus, monarchists supporters of the Ancien Régime following the French Revolution were counterrevolutionaries, for example the Revolt in the Vendée and the monarchies that put down the various Revolutions of 1848. The royalist legitimist counterrevolutionary French movement survives to this day, albeit marginally. It was active during the purported "Révolution nationale" enacted by Vichy France, though, which has been considered by René Rémond not as a fascist regime but as a counterrevolutionary regime, whose motto was Travail, Famille, Patrie ("Work, Family, Fatherland"), which replaced the Republican motto Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
After the French Revolution, anticlerical policies and the execution of King Louis XVI led to the Revolt in the Vendee. This counter-revolution produced what is debated to be the first modern genocide. Monarchists and Catholics took up arms against the revolutionaries' French Republic in 1793 after the government asked that 300,000 Vendeans be conscripted into the Republican military. The Vendeans would also rise up against Napoleon's attempt to conscript them in 1815.
The supporters of Carlism during the 19th century to the present day are perhaps the oldest surviving counter-revolutionary group in Spain. Supporters uphold the legitimist view of royal succession, as well as regional autonomy under the monarchy, tradition and Catholicism. The Carlist cause began with the First Carlist War in 1833 and continues to the present.
The White Army and its supporters who tried to defeat the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, as well as the German politicians, police, soldiers and Freikorps who crushed the German Revolution of 1918–1919, were also counter-revolutionaries. General Victoriano Huerta, and later the Felicistas, attempted to thwart the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s.
Anti-revolutionairy ideology of Dutch Calvinists
Orthodox-Protestant Dutch Calvinist christians opposed the French revolution and atheist socialism, communism and secular bourgeois liberalism fiercly, because they considered it as being anti-christian or non-christian. The very word "Anti-revolutionairy" means opposition to the Godless and evil French revolution, in the eyes of these Calvinist conservatives of the 19th and 20th century. This is connected to the "Bible Belt" because these people were/are from the Bible Belt and were very influential in the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Pillar and in the political arena of the Netherlands. There were quite a few anti-revolutionairy prime-ministers, ministers and parlaimentarians. Some Dutch-Americans have Calvinist anti-revolutionairy roots. Often these people are conservative republicans, conservative independent voters or Tea party supporters. They were against the French revolution which they considered to be "Godless", but not against the American revoltution, because the American revolution was in large part a revolution for religious freedom, puritinical Calvinist, Baptist, Methodist and other Protestants who migrated to America.
The first antip-revolutionairy leader Abraham Kuyper
The anti-revolutionary parliamentary caucus had existed since the 1840s. It represented orthodox tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church. Under the leadership of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer the anti-revolutionaries became a real political force, which opposed the liberal tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church and the liberal tendencies within Dutch politics. Their three values were "God, the Netherlands, and the House of Orange". At the time the anti-revolutionary ideal was a Protestant theocracy in which Catholics and Jews were second-class citizens.
ARP election add
An important issue was public education, which in the view of the anti-revolutionaries should be Protestant-Christian in nature. The anti-revolutionaries had ties with the April movement, which opposed the official re-establishment of Roman Catholic bishoprics, and a mixed relationship with (liberal-) conservatives in the House of Representatives, who also opposed reforms to the social and political system but often on the basis of a mix of liberal Protestantism and secular humanism. During the 1860s Groen van Prinsterer became more isolated from his conservative allies. He also began to reformulate his Protestant-Christian ideals, and began to plead for "souvereiniteit in eigen kring" (sphere sovereignty) instead of theocracy. This meant that instead of one Protestant-Christian society, Groen van Prinsterer wanted a Protestant society within a pluralistic society ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation ). Orthodox Protestants would have their own churches, schools, papers, political parties and sports clubs. This laid the basis for pillarization, which was to dominate Dutch society between 1880 and 1960.
In 1864 Groen van Prinsterer began to correspond with a young Dutch Reformed theologian named Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was heavily influenced by Groen van Prinsterer's ideas and began to put the latter's ideal of an orthodox Protestant society within Dutch society into practice.
The Anti-revolutionairies had one practical political goal: equalization of payment between public and religious schools. It had one political strategy: the anti-thesis between religious and non-religious parties, which meant that they sought to break the cooperation between liberals and Catholics and to create an alliance between Catholics and Protestants.
The Anti-revolutionairy Party, ARP (1879-1980)
ARP election poster from the thirtees
Ideology and issues
The ARP started out as an orthodox Protestant party, heavily opposed to the ideals of the French revolution. Against the revolution, they put the Bible: instead of liberty, it favoured divine providence, instead of equality it favoured hierarchy and instead of brotherhood it favoured sovereignty in its own circle. Its ideals could be summed up in the trio "God, the Netherlands and the House of Orange". For most of its history it had this conservative Protestant image. In the 1960s and 1970s the party began to adopt a more leftwing radical evangelical image.
Anti-revolutionairy, ARP, election car
God
The ARP was a confessional Protestant party which based its politics on the Bible and opposed the concept of popular sovereignty.
The concept of sphere sovereignty was very important for the party. It wanted to create an independent Protestant society within the Dutch society, with its own schools, papers, hospitals, universities, broadcast organisations (Radio and TV stations), Protestant Unions and community life. It sought equal government finances for its own institutions. Societies should care for their own, therefore they opposed a large role for the state in social-economic policy.
The ARP saw an important role for the state in upholding the values of the Dutch people. It was socially conservative: it opposed co-education, mandatory vaccination, divorce, pornography, euthanasia, abortion, Feminism, Gay rights activism and environmentalism. It also favoured the death penalty.
Anti-revolutionairy prime-minister Barend Biesheuvel. He was prime-minister from 1971 until 1973.
The Netherlands
The party can be seen as rather nationalist. It favoured a strong defense to retain Dutch neutrality. It opposed decolonization. It saw the colonies in Indonesia, as vital for the continued wealth and influence for the Dutch people. It also wanted to enlighten the native population with Christian values.
Jelle Zijlstra (1918-2001), ARP-politician. Zijlstra was prime-minister and minister of Finance. The photo is from 1956.
Orange
The ARP favoured monarchy, and saw the House of Orange as historically and religiously linked to the Dutch people. It opposed changes to Dutch political system, it wanted to retain bicameralism, opposed popular referendums etc. Its commitment to universal suffrage was only tactical as the ARP expected that it would be able to gain more seats this way. Principally it wanted Householder Franchise where the father of each family would vote for his family.
The party was fiscally conservative: the Dutch government should be like a good father: it should not spend more than it got through taxes.
Dissolution
Meanwhile a process of merger had started between the Roman Catholic KVP, ARP and CHU (the Christian Historian Union). In 1974 they founded a federation called the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). In the formation of a common Christian-democratic identity anti-revolutionary Aantjes played a decisive role: he orients the party towards the sermon on the Mount where Christ says that Christians should clothe the naked and feed the hungry. In the 1977 elections they campaigned together under as the CDA. Some prominent anti-revolutionaries, like Aantjes did not agree the CDA/VVD cabinet (rightwing or centre-right coalition of Christian-democrats and secular liberal-conservatives of the VVD) that was formed after the elections, and wanted to continue with the PvdA (=the Dutch Labour party), however they supported the cabinet politically. A group of these anti-revolutionaries left the CDA in 1981 to found the left-wing Christian Evangelical People's Party.
Christian democracy
Since 1880 the sizeable Catholic and Protestant parties had worked together in the so-called Coalitie. They shared a common interest in public funding of religious schools. In 1888 they formed the first Christian-democratic government, led by the Anti-Revolutionary Æneas Baron Mackay. The cooperation was not without problems and in 1894 the more anti-papist and aristocratic conservatives left the Protestant Anti Revolutionary Party, to found the Christian Historical Union. The main issues dividing Protestants and Catholics was the position of the Dutch Representation at the Holy See and the future of the Dutch Indies.
From 1918 onward the three parties had a majority in both houses of States-General, and at least two of three parties were represented in the cabinets. This majority lasted until 1967. After the war the three Christian-democratic parties were the Catholic People's Party (KVP), the Protestant Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP), and the Protestant Christian Historical Union (CHU). The KVP and its antecedent, the Roman Catholic State Party, had been in government without interruption since 1918.
In the sixties, the Dutch society became more secularized and the pillars faded, and voters began to move away from the three Christian-democratic parties. In 1963 the three parties held 51% of the vote, whilst in 1972 they held only 32%. This decline forced the three parties to work closer together. In 1967 the Group of Eighteen was formed: it was a think-tank of six prominent politicians per party that planned the future cooperation of the three parties. In 1968 the three political leaders of the parties (Norbert Schmelzer (KVP), Barend Biesheuvel (ARP) and Jur Mellema (CHU) made a public appearance, stating that the three parties would continue to work together.
This caused progressive forces within the three parties, especially the anti-revolutionairy, Calvinist ARP and Roman-Catholic KVP to regret their political affiliation. In 1968 they founded the Political Party of Radicals, PPR, a left-wing party that sought cooperation with the Labour Party (PvdA). Locally and provincially however the three parties had long cooperated well, in some areas they formed one Christian-democratic parliamentary party and proposed one list of candidates. In the 1971 general election, the three parties presented a common political program, which lay the foundation for the first Biesheuvel cabinet.
After the disastrous elections of 1972 the cooperation was given new momentum. Piet Steenkamp, a member of the House of Representatives for the KVP was appointed chairman of a council which was to lay the foundation for a federation of the three parties, and provide a common manifesto of principles. In 1973 this federation was officially formed, with Steenkamp as chairperson.
The cooperation was frustrated by the formation of the Den Uyl cabinet, established by the leader of the social-democratic PvdA and Prime Minister of the Netherlands Joop den Uyl. Den Uyl refused to allow members of the CHU in the cabinet that he would lead. This led to a situation where the CHU, ARP and KVP formed a federation and had one parliamentary party in both houses of parliament, but only the KVP and ARP supplied ministers and junior ministers. The cabinet Den Uyl was riddled with political and personal conflicts. Another issue that split the three parties was the place the Bible would take in the new party. Until this day the Anti-revolutionairies are dominant in the Dutch society, because the Protestant wing (about 50%) of the Christian-democratic party, CDA, has Calvinist anti-revolutionairy roots. The National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands, CNV, has a lot of Anti-revolutionairy leaders, activists and members. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christelijk_Nationaal_Vakverbond ) And next to this the two small protestant christian parties in parlaiment represent different versions of the Anti-revolutionairy ideology, the Christian Union and the the Reformed Political Party, SGP.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Appeal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChristenUnie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right
P.S.- Human history has always shown a tension and anti-thesis between Christian ethics, values, traditions, customs, the desire for harmony and peace (the mutual respect or mutualism of the christian faith and ideology) on one side and the human nature and the will for power [Machiavellist nature of politicians, political activists, leaders and governments], division/discord, powerstruggle, survival of the fittest and the Iron fist of political stuggle and war between fractions or parties. I mean the polarisation of our societes and the mutual hatred or intolerance between conservatives and liberals, Capitalists and real socialists, monarchists and anti-monarchists (for instance a lot of these Anti-revolutionairies, fierce monarchists, could drink the blood of Kaima, Kai the anti-monarchist).
The Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the south-eastern and south-central United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. The Bible Belt consists of much of the Southern United States. During the colonial period (1607–1776), the South was a stronghold of the Anglican church. Its transition to a stronghold of non-Anglican Protestantism occurred gradually over the next century as a series of religious revival movements, many associated with the Baptist denomination, gained great popularity in the region.
The region is usually contrasted with the mainline Protestantism and Catholicism of the northeastern United States, the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes, the Mormon Corridor in Utah and southern Idaho, and the relatively secular western United States. Whereas the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious is the New England state of Vermont at 34%, in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 6%. Mississippi has the highest proportion of Baptists, at 55%. The earliest known usage of the term "Bible Belt" was by American journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken, who in 1924 wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune: "The old game, I suspect, is beginning to play out in the Bible Belt." Mencken claimed the term as his invention in 1927.
The Bible Belt in the USA
Geography
The name "Bible Belt" has been applied historically to the South and parts of the Midwest, but is more commonly identified with the South. In a 1961 study, Wilbur Zelinsky delineated the region as the area in which denominations are the predominant religious affiliation. The region thus defined included most of the Southern United States, including most of Texas and Oklahoma in the southwest, and in the states south of the Ohio River, and extending east to include central West Virginia, Virginia south of Northern Virginia, and parts of Maryland. In addition, the Bible Belt covers parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. A 1978 study by Charles Heatwole identified the Bible Belt as the region dominated by 24 fundamentalist Protestant denominations, corresponding to essentially the same area mapped by Zielinski.
Tweedie (1978) defines the Bible Belt in terms of the audience for religious television. He finds two belts: one more eastern that stretches from central Florida through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and into Virginia; and another that is more western, moving from central Texas to the Dakotas, and concentrated in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Mississippi.
The Bible Belt in the Netherlands
In The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, De Bijbelgordel stretches from the provinces of Zeeland to Overijssel. It was essentially the border between the Protestant and Catholic parts of the Netherlands after the Protestant Reformation (around 1560). The Dutch Bible Belt developed more explicitly in the 19th century. In the Bijbelgordel, the popular SGP favored a theocracy, and women were denied full party membership and the ability to be political representatives, although this was changed in respectively 1996 and 2012 when women were allowed to be members of the SGP (the Reformed Political Party) and the party granted passive suffrage to its female members. Immigrants from this area to the U.S. formed the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
In The United Kingdom
Scotland
In Scotland the Highlands and Islands are a stronghold of Christianity, both in the Church of Scotland and in smaller Presbyterian denominations such as the Free Church of Scotland. However, neither region is referred to as a 'bible belt'.
Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, the County Antrim area stretching from roughly Portrush to Larne and centered in the area of Ballymena is often referred to as a Bible Belt. This is because the area is heavily Protestant with a large evangelical community. From 1970 to 2010, the MP for North Antrim was Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian minister well known for his theological fundamentalism. The town of Ballymena, the largest town in the constituency, is often referred to as the "buckle" of the Bible Belt.
Comment Pieter: The Northern-Irish Bible could be connected to the Dutch biblebelt, because the Protestant presence in Northern-Ireland has to do with a Dutch king of England which conquered Northern-Ireland. The Orange marches of the Protestants in Northern-Ireland are directly linked to that past, because that Orange color is the color of the Dutch Royal family. The Dutch-born Protestant King of England, Ireland and Scotland William of Orange, defeated the army of Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_III_of_England )
Counter-revolutionary or anti-revolutionairy christian conservatives
The word "counterrevolutionary" originally refers to thinkers who opposed themselves to the 1789 French Revolution, such as Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald or, later, Charles Maurras, the founder of the Action française monarchist movement. Henceforth, it is used in France to qualify political movements that refuse the legacy of the 1789 Revolution, which historian René Rémond has referred to as légitimistes. Thus, monarchists supporters of the Ancien Régime following the French Revolution were counterrevolutionaries, for example the Revolt in the Vendée and the monarchies that put down the various Revolutions of 1848. The royalist legitimist counterrevolutionary French movement survives to this day, albeit marginally. It was active during the purported "Révolution nationale" enacted by Vichy France, though, which has been considered by René Rémond not as a fascist regime but as a counterrevolutionary regime, whose motto was Travail, Famille, Patrie ("Work, Family, Fatherland"), which replaced the Republican motto Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
After the French Revolution, anticlerical policies and the execution of King Louis XVI led to the Revolt in the Vendee. This counter-revolution produced what is debated to be the first modern genocide. Monarchists and Catholics took up arms against the revolutionaries' French Republic in 1793 after the government asked that 300,000 Vendeans be conscripted into the Republican military. The Vendeans would also rise up against Napoleon's attempt to conscript them in 1815.
The supporters of Carlism during the 19th century to the present day are perhaps the oldest surviving counter-revolutionary group in Spain. Supporters uphold the legitimist view of royal succession, as well as regional autonomy under the monarchy, tradition and Catholicism. The Carlist cause began with the First Carlist War in 1833 and continues to the present.
The White Army and its supporters who tried to defeat the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, as well as the German politicians, police, soldiers and Freikorps who crushed the German Revolution of 1918–1919, were also counter-revolutionaries. General Victoriano Huerta, and later the Felicistas, attempted to thwart the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s.
Anti-revolutionairy ideology of Dutch Calvinists
Orthodox-Protestant Dutch Calvinist christians opposed the French revolution and atheist socialism, communism and secular bourgeois liberalism fiercly, because they considered it as being anti-christian or non-christian. The very word "Anti-revolutionairy" means opposition to the Godless and evil French revolution, in the eyes of these Calvinist conservatives of the 19th and 20th century. This is connected to the "Bible Belt" because these people were/are from the Bible Belt and were very influential in the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Pillar and in the political arena of the Netherlands. There were quite a few anti-revolutionairy prime-ministers, ministers and parlaimentarians. Some Dutch-Americans have Calvinist anti-revolutionairy roots. Often these people are conservative republicans, conservative independent voters or Tea party supporters. They were against the French revolution which they considered to be "Godless", but not against the American revoltution, because the American revolution was in large part a revolution for religious freedom, puritinical Calvinist, Baptist, Methodist and other Protestants who migrated to America.
The first antip-revolutionairy leader Abraham Kuyper
The anti-revolutionary parliamentary caucus had existed since the 1840s. It represented orthodox tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church. Under the leadership of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer the anti-revolutionaries became a real political force, which opposed the liberal tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church and the liberal tendencies within Dutch politics. Their three values were "God, the Netherlands, and the House of Orange". At the time the anti-revolutionary ideal was a Protestant theocracy in which Catholics and Jews were second-class citizens.
ARP election add
An important issue was public education, which in the view of the anti-revolutionaries should be Protestant-Christian in nature. The anti-revolutionaries had ties with the April movement, which opposed the official re-establishment of Roman Catholic bishoprics, and a mixed relationship with (liberal-) conservatives in the House of Representatives, who also opposed reforms to the social and political system but often on the basis of a mix of liberal Protestantism and secular humanism. During the 1860s Groen van Prinsterer became more isolated from his conservative allies. He also began to reformulate his Protestant-Christian ideals, and began to plead for "souvereiniteit in eigen kring" (sphere sovereignty) instead of theocracy. This meant that instead of one Protestant-Christian society, Groen van Prinsterer wanted a Protestant society within a pluralistic society ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation ). Orthodox Protestants would have their own churches, schools, papers, political parties and sports clubs. This laid the basis for pillarization, which was to dominate Dutch society between 1880 and 1960.
In 1864 Groen van Prinsterer began to correspond with a young Dutch Reformed theologian named Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was heavily influenced by Groen van Prinsterer's ideas and began to put the latter's ideal of an orthodox Protestant society within Dutch society into practice.
The Anti-revolutionairies had one practical political goal: equalization of payment between public and religious schools. It had one political strategy: the anti-thesis between religious and non-religious parties, which meant that they sought to break the cooperation between liberals and Catholics and to create an alliance between Catholics and Protestants.
The Anti-revolutionairy Party, ARP (1879-1980)
ARP election poster from the thirtees
Ideology and issues
The ARP started out as an orthodox Protestant party, heavily opposed to the ideals of the French revolution. Against the revolution, they put the Bible: instead of liberty, it favoured divine providence, instead of equality it favoured hierarchy and instead of brotherhood it favoured sovereignty in its own circle. Its ideals could be summed up in the trio "God, the Netherlands and the House of Orange". For most of its history it had this conservative Protestant image. In the 1960s and 1970s the party began to adopt a more leftwing radical evangelical image.
Anti-revolutionairy, ARP, election car
God
The ARP was a confessional Protestant party which based its politics on the Bible and opposed the concept of popular sovereignty.
The concept of sphere sovereignty was very important for the party. It wanted to create an independent Protestant society within the Dutch society, with its own schools, papers, hospitals, universities, broadcast organisations (Radio and TV stations), Protestant Unions and community life. It sought equal government finances for its own institutions. Societies should care for their own, therefore they opposed a large role for the state in social-economic policy.
The ARP saw an important role for the state in upholding the values of the Dutch people. It was socially conservative: it opposed co-education, mandatory vaccination, divorce, pornography, euthanasia, abortion, Feminism, Gay rights activism and environmentalism. It also favoured the death penalty.
Anti-revolutionairy prime-minister Barend Biesheuvel. He was prime-minister from 1971 until 1973.
The Netherlands
The party can be seen as rather nationalist. It favoured a strong defense to retain Dutch neutrality. It opposed decolonization. It saw the colonies in Indonesia, as vital for the continued wealth and influence for the Dutch people. It also wanted to enlighten the native population with Christian values.
Jelle Zijlstra (1918-2001), ARP-politician. Zijlstra was prime-minister and minister of Finance. The photo is from 1956.
Orange
The ARP favoured monarchy, and saw the House of Orange as historically and religiously linked to the Dutch people. It opposed changes to Dutch political system, it wanted to retain bicameralism, opposed popular referendums etc. Its commitment to universal suffrage was only tactical as the ARP expected that it would be able to gain more seats this way. Principally it wanted Householder Franchise where the father of each family would vote for his family.
The party was fiscally conservative: the Dutch government should be like a good father: it should not spend more than it got through taxes.
Dissolution
Meanwhile a process of merger had started between the Roman Catholic KVP, ARP and CHU (the Christian Historian Union). In 1974 they founded a federation called the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). In the formation of a common Christian-democratic identity anti-revolutionary Aantjes played a decisive role: he orients the party towards the sermon on the Mount where Christ says that Christians should clothe the naked and feed the hungry. In the 1977 elections they campaigned together under as the CDA. Some prominent anti-revolutionaries, like Aantjes did not agree the CDA/VVD cabinet (rightwing or centre-right coalition of Christian-democrats and secular liberal-conservatives of the VVD) that was formed after the elections, and wanted to continue with the PvdA (=the Dutch Labour party), however they supported the cabinet politically. A group of these anti-revolutionaries left the CDA in 1981 to found the left-wing Christian Evangelical People's Party.
Christian democracy
Since 1880 the sizeable Catholic and Protestant parties had worked together in the so-called Coalitie. They shared a common interest in public funding of religious schools. In 1888 they formed the first Christian-democratic government, led by the Anti-Revolutionary Æneas Baron Mackay. The cooperation was not without problems and in 1894 the more anti-papist and aristocratic conservatives left the Protestant Anti Revolutionary Party, to found the Christian Historical Union. The main issues dividing Protestants and Catholics was the position of the Dutch Representation at the Holy See and the future of the Dutch Indies.
From 1918 onward the three parties had a majority in both houses of States-General, and at least two of three parties were represented in the cabinets. This majority lasted until 1967. After the war the three Christian-democratic parties were the Catholic People's Party (KVP), the Protestant Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP), and the Protestant Christian Historical Union (CHU). The KVP and its antecedent, the Roman Catholic State Party, had been in government without interruption since 1918.
In the sixties, the Dutch society became more secularized and the pillars faded, and voters began to move away from the three Christian-democratic parties. In 1963 the three parties held 51% of the vote, whilst in 1972 they held only 32%. This decline forced the three parties to work closer together. In 1967 the Group of Eighteen was formed: it was a think-tank of six prominent politicians per party that planned the future cooperation of the three parties. In 1968 the three political leaders of the parties (Norbert Schmelzer (KVP), Barend Biesheuvel (ARP) and Jur Mellema (CHU) made a public appearance, stating that the three parties would continue to work together.
This caused progressive forces within the three parties, especially the anti-revolutionairy, Calvinist ARP and Roman-Catholic KVP to regret their political affiliation. In 1968 they founded the Political Party of Radicals, PPR, a left-wing party that sought cooperation with the Labour Party (PvdA). Locally and provincially however the three parties had long cooperated well, in some areas they formed one Christian-democratic parliamentary party and proposed one list of candidates. In the 1971 general election, the three parties presented a common political program, which lay the foundation for the first Biesheuvel cabinet.
After the disastrous elections of 1972 the cooperation was given new momentum. Piet Steenkamp, a member of the House of Representatives for the KVP was appointed chairman of a council which was to lay the foundation for a federation of the three parties, and provide a common manifesto of principles. In 1973 this federation was officially formed, with Steenkamp as chairperson.
The cooperation was frustrated by the formation of the Den Uyl cabinet, established by the leader of the social-democratic PvdA and Prime Minister of the Netherlands Joop den Uyl. Den Uyl refused to allow members of the CHU in the cabinet that he would lead. This led to a situation where the CHU, ARP and KVP formed a federation and had one parliamentary party in both houses of parliament, but only the KVP and ARP supplied ministers and junior ministers. The cabinet Den Uyl was riddled with political and personal conflicts. Another issue that split the three parties was the place the Bible would take in the new party. Until this day the Anti-revolutionairies are dominant in the Dutch society, because the Protestant wing (about 50%) of the Christian-democratic party, CDA, has Calvinist anti-revolutionairy roots. The National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands, CNV, has a lot of Anti-revolutionairy leaders, activists and members. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christelijk_Nationaal_Vakverbond ) And next to this the two small protestant christian parties in parlaiment represent different versions of the Anti-revolutionairy ideology, the Christian Union and the the Reformed Political Party, SGP.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Appeal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChristenUnie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right
P.S.- Human history has always shown a tension and anti-thesis between Christian ethics, values, traditions, customs, the desire for harmony and peace (the mutual respect or mutualism of the christian faith and ideology) on one side and the human nature and the will for power [Machiavellist nature of politicians, political activists, leaders and governments], division/discord, powerstruggle, survival of the fittest and the Iron fist of political stuggle and war between fractions or parties. I mean the polarisation of our societes and the mutual hatred or intolerance between conservatives and liberals, Capitalists and real socialists, monarchists and anti-monarchists (for instance a lot of these Anti-revolutionairies, fierce monarchists, could drink the blood of Kaima, Kai the anti-monarchist).