Religious regimes

Ever since religion became the object of scholarly attention, many different approaches have been developed to analyse its contents, functions and social embedding.Footnote ³ The main historiographical traditions have struggled to come to terms with the history of religion in the second half of the twentieth century. The theory-based approaches stressing quantitative dimensions of religion, such as the French tradition of the history of mentalities, or the German tradition of analysing religious milieus, subcultures or ‘pillars’, have interpreted this period as an era of decline.Footnote ⁴ Approaches which less explicitly refer to a conceptual framework, such as the rich studies of Callum Brown and Hugh McLeod about the 1960s, have not managed to avoid the image of decay either.Footnote ⁵ Many of these studies seem to define as ‘religion’ only those specific forms and practices of religion which have been dominant in Western Europe between roughly 1850 and 1950.Footnote ⁶ Interpretations of the changing relationships between religious communities and the state as instances of gradual ‘modernization’ or of social differentiation are closely interwoven with such narratives of decay. The disestablishment of state churches, the social equality of all religious groups and the neutrality of the state vis-à-vis these groups are portrayed as the result of an all but inevitable historical development.Footnote ⁷

The concept of religious regimes takes us beyond these narratives of decay and discontinuity. First developed to highlight the interplay between religion and the socio-political order by anthropologists such as Mart Bax and Peter van Rooden, we define a religious regime as an institutionalised arrangement regulating the social position of religion in a society during a certain period.Footnote ⁸ This perspective therefore asks how different understandings of the role of religion have become dominant during different historical epochs. Crucially, in our view, religious regimes rarely result from a single vision of the role of religion but rather represent a compromise between several competing views.Footnote ⁹ The competition between these views explains why religious regimes are usually not comprehensively implemented. It also provides decisive insight into the process of the transformation of religious regimes through shifts in the balance of power between groups representing different views of the desired social role or religion. Unlike Van Rooden then, we contend that transformations from one religious regime to another usually present themselves not as radical ruptures between different regimes but instead as gradual changes.

The concept of religious regimes has four general advantages. First, it historicises religion. Religion is not regarded as a fixed entity but as a dynamic one. It changes according to how people have understood and positioned it. Second, it allows for a social and spatial contextualisation. Because it requires the analysis of religion as a socially embedded phenomenon, the concept bridges the divide between the traditional history of religion and the broader perspective of the history of society. Such a connection necessitates mutual questioning: how did changes in the religious sphere relate to changes in other parts of society? Were they instigators of social transformation or reactions to new circumstances? Regarding the spatial dimension, the concept questions the relationship between religious regimes and the national political order. The entanglements between ruling elites discussing preferred modes of organising religion and between religious groups staking out their claims, the transnational nature of many religious communities and the crucial role of reflections on developments throughout the world played in forming notions of the desired social role of religion call for an approach which acknowledges the importance of nation states without singling them out as isolated entities. Instead, we should ask what the relation between local, regional, national, colonial and transnational religious regimes has been. Did the existing religious regimes at these various levels augment or challenge each other? Where did new visions of the role of religion originate, how did they disseminate and on what spatial scale could they be institutionalised?

Third, the vantage point of religious regimes makes us aware of the role of power. Although the power structures of religion are not usually a popular subject among either believers or scholars of the subject, power plays an essential role both within religious communities and within the broader societal context in which religious communities are situated. Within the history of religious communities, issues of social control and struggles among religious leaders have traditionally been essential ingredients. Religion also provides a way to either in- or exclude others and is thus part of the power structures which shape societies more generally. In analysing religious regimes, the ways in which religious communities staked out their claims to shape the socio-political order can be questioned. Critically, religious regimes have not only been shaped according to visions of religious communities themselves but also by non-religious groups who exerted influence. Thus, the shifting coalitions and compromises between different religious and non-religious groups become fundamental for understanding the dynamics of religious regimes.

Fourth, this emphasis on power helps us to keep a critical distance from the recent history of religion, which has often been portrayed as a history of the liberation from the bonds of traditional religion.Footnote ¹⁰ Such accounts position a cultural revolution at the heart of post-war history, which, for better or worse, supposedly led to emancipation and individual self-fulfilment. For example, according to Van Rooden, ‘the stress on consumption and individual self-fulfilment clashed radically with the non-reflexive and authoritarian character of the religious practices of Christianity – and the latter collapsed’.Footnote ¹¹ Consequently, he has not defined a new religious regime for the period after the 1960s.Footnote ¹² However, from that period on people have not ceased to be guided by what is expected from them. Michel Foucault has pointed to the changing shapes of power, calling attention to ‘a power that governs by freedom, not repression, and which reigns over people by regulating and positioning them, not excluding and institutionalizing them’.Footnote ¹³ Since religion has not ceased to be of social relevance since the 1960s, it becomes necessary to also consider the shape of the religious regimes from that period onward.

We regard the history of religion in post-war Dutch society as a shift from a religious regime of segmented pluralism to a religious regime of national unity, caused by the interplay of three competing views which have been prevalent throughout Europe: segmented pluralism, the unified Christian nation and the unified secular nation. In the following pages we will demonstrate the new insights the concept of religious regimes yield, using a case study on the role of religion in Dutch society since 1945. Dutch religious history has often been presented as having been uniquely shaped by the processes of ‘pillarisation’ and ‘depillarisation’. Within the Netherlands, this claim to uniqueness was used either to push for societal changes so that the Netherlands might become a more ‘normal’ country by rejecting this legacy or to point to a valuable national tradition to which the Dutch should hold firm. Internationally, the claim served to present the Netherlands as a rare, and therefore interesting, case.Footnote ¹⁴ Instead, this article argues that the history of religious regimes in the Netherlands is worthwhile, not because of its alleged uniqueness, but rather because it yields insights into the development of the societal role of religion which serves to connect various European histories of religion.

Segmented pluralism contested

During the transition from a country occupied by German forces back to an independent constitutional democracy in 1945, the societal role of religion in the future Netherlands was heavily contested. On the one hand, supporters of a restorative course insisted on a pivotal role for religious communities and their network of civic organisations, which had come to dominate society in the pre-war period. On the other hand, advocates of a more profound renewal of Dutch society favoured following a path in which national unity would rise above divisions based on denominational affiliations. With these two contrasting visions a pre-war debate recurred under novel circumstances. A new balance was struck between a view of a religious regime which placed separate religious communities at the heart of Dutch society on the one hand, and two views which regarded denominational differences as unwarranted on the other – one informed by the goal of a unified Christian nation, one by the desire for a secular nation.

In the late nineteenth century, the development of highly integrated and isolated communities throughout Europe had challenged the traditional religious regimes, which, in many countries, had bound a single denomination to the nation as a community. In the Netherlands, the rise of an Orthodox-Protestant, a Catholic and a social-democrat community contested the traditional assumption of a Protestant nation, which had been adhered to by liberal and conservative elites alike until that time. All three of these groups claimed to represent the moral heart of the nation. Orthodox Protestants at least referred to Protestantism as the key element of the Dutch nation but proclaimed liberal Protestants to have forsaken this tradition, positioning themselves as the true keepers of the Dutch Protestant flame.Footnote ¹⁵ Catholics and social democrats outright rejected such a Protestant tradition, claiming instead a position dating back to the ‘Catholic’ middle ages or deeming the working class the moral heart of the nation.Footnote ¹⁶ In staking out their claims both by articulating their ideas and by channelling these into practical attempts at organisation, the developments in Germany were an important foil for their Dutch neighbours: whilst liberal Protestants considered the advantages of the methods of the so-called ‘culture war’ (Kulturkampf), their challengers took to the methods employed by Catholics and social democrats in the 1870s and 1880s.Footnote ¹⁷

Eventually collectively claiming a majority of Dutch voters, the elites of these three communities set out to cement their position, thus establishing a new religious regime against the opposition of both those who adhered to the former regime of the Protestant nation and those groups who advocated a more radical reduction of the societal role of religion. The exact time of this transition has been debated in Dutch historiography. Van Rooden has dated it as early as the 1880s, pointing towards the successful establishment of separate orthodox Protestants and Catholics communities around that time.Footnote ¹⁸ The influential political scientist Arend Lijphart has proclaimed the adoption of two major changes in the Dutch constitution in 1917 to be the critical divide in Dutch history in this period. The adoption of universal suffrage (for women in 1919) and the declaration of equal status for denominational schools and public schools with regard to state funding indeed served to consolidate the position of the three communities both through the potential to gain a majority of the votes and through the possibility of educating their youth in separate schools.Footnote ¹⁹ Similar to our claim about the post-war transition to a new religious regime, the period from about 1880 to around 1930 can best be described as a phase of gradual transition from the regime of the Protestant nation to the regime of segmented pluralism.Footnote ²⁰

Although the constitutional changes in 1917 do point towards the new combined power of orthodox Protestants, Catholics and social democrats to influence governmental arrangements to their advantage, their position was not undisputed thereafter. The 1920s saw a prolonged battle for similar arrangements in the developing broadcasting services, in which advocates of a national broadcasting service comparable to the British Broadcasting Corporation opposed supporters of a broadcasting service dominated by different broadcasting associations each representing distinct denominational and ideological communities. It was only after a long and halting public debate that a government dominated by Catholics and orthodox Protestants granted the latter position the upper hand: four broadcasting associations – one Catholic, one orthodox Protestant, one social democrat and one general – would each have twenty per cent of the available broadcasting time at their disposal. The remaining twenty per cent was available for general items such as the news bulletins and for smaller associations such as a liberal Protestant broadcasting organisation. This arrangement, which is cited by Arend Lijphart as a prime example of segmented pluralism in practice, thus turned out to be a compromise between those who wanted one national broadcasting service and those claiming the available time for their associations: sixty per cent of the available time was allocated to representatives of the three communities claiming moral superiority for their own group, forty per cent was in the hands of groups contesting their claims and instead aspiring to moral unity of the nation as a whole.Footnote ²¹ Thus, the religious regime of segmented pluralism was not only a compromise between three groups each claiming their own space within the framework of the nation. It was also a contested regime, which could not be implemented comprehensively.

The balance of power between these different visions of the societal role of religion slowly shifted in the post-war period. During the years of German occupation, the call for national unity had strengthened. Both the Christian and the secular nation thus came to the fore as possible alternatives for the pre-war institutionalisation of segmented pluralism. The vision of a unified Christian nation was above all invigorated by members of the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlands Hervormde Kerk). During the German occupation, they had debated why their church had not done more to ward off National Socialism. This resulted in concrete plans to develop an institute which would reach out to estranged societal groups such as workers.Footnote ²² It also fuelled a broader movement to turn the Dutch Reformed Church into a ‘Christ-avowed church of the people’. Several members of this church became champions of national Christian unity, publicly questioning the old institutions of segmented pluralism.Footnote ²³

In political matters, the push for unity was embodied by Protestant ministers such as Willem Banning. He joined ranks with former social democratic and liberal politicians to found the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, hereafter: PvdA) in 1946. Even before the party was founded, a group of seven prominent clergymen publicly announced that they regarded the 1937 social democrat program to be a meaningful starting point for Christian politics. Religious views could not, in their minds, predetermine political views. Therefore, founding socio-political organisations on the basis of a separate denomination was pointless. According to the authors of the pamphlet which explained this position, it would make more sense to define practical political goals and cooperate with whoever shared these goals. For these clergymen, the program of the former Social Democrat Party could serve as a starting point for cooperation across the boundaries of denominations.Footnote ²⁴ The new party, which they joined, distanced itself from pre-war politics by choosing a new name and by stressing the open nature of the organisation: it did not hold any religion or ideology above others but instead wanted to give room to citizens from different backgrounds to cooperate pragmatically in political matters. This openness was stressed by the creation of study groups for Protestants, Catholics and secular humanists within the party.Footnote ²⁵

A similar push for inclusive organisation also took place within the trade union movement. Here, the Dutch Reformed commission for ‘Church and Trade Union Movement’ played a pivotal role. Through this commission the church established regular contacts with the Social Democrat trade union, Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions (Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen, hereafter: NVV) and questioned the segmentation within the movement. In 1946 it issued a statement claiming ‘the separation of the trade union movement in Christian and non-Christian organisations cannot be regarded as self-evident’. The commission urged workers from both organisations to strife for a new, joint union which would ‘act in accordance with the demands of the Word of God in all its activities’. In the meantime the committee tried to find a middle ground between speaking out on behalf of either the Christian trade unions or the supra-denominational NVV.Footnote ²⁶ This half-hearted stance reflected the internal division within the Dutch Reformed Church, in which the faction working for a new Christian national unity was opposed by those who favoured social segmentation along denominational lines.

Within the ranks of both the PvdA and the NVV, the boundary between those who strove for a unity inspired by Christianity and those who aspired for secular unity was unclear in practice. This lack of clarity was caused by the similar political views held by both groups, which, in both instances, resulted in attempts to loosen the ties between religious communities and civil society and adopt policies directed at general welfare. This made it easy for their opponents to characterise the movement for greater unity as a socialist, secular project. For example, in 1949, after NVV-official Ad Vermeulen had presented an international conference with his unions’ claim of inclusivity and labelled the resistance of Catholic bishops concerning this issue a breach of individual rights, both Catholics and orthodox Protestants rejected his speech as socialist and disrespectful to the Dutch Catholic community. An organisation containing officials who did not respect the opinions of those holding on to their denominational identity could not claim to represent all Dutch workers.Footnote ²⁷ The success of the call for unified organisations thus remained relatively limited. The pre-war associations remained influential, although the post-war order was at the same time shaped by councils with representatives from different groups, which acknowledged the need to co-operate. Nonetheless, support in some Christian circles for the attempts to create unified bodies in the fields of politics and trade unions cannot be understood without recognising the appeal of a vision of unity inspired by a missionary Christianity rather than secularism.

Bridging divides: the post-war welfare state

The balance between a vision positioning separate religious communities at the heart of Dutch society and a vision regarding denominational differences as unwarranted shifted during the fifties. The latter, which was shared by Protestants advocating a Christian and a diffuse group of advocates of a secular nation, slowly gained more influence, as can be seen in the development of the Dutch welfare state. In this area, the balance between self-organised communities and a common state infrastructure had heavily favoured self-organisation before the Second World War. Compared to other European countries, Dutch social provisions had long remained underdeveloped. With the exception of the Social Democrats, the political parties preferred a mixed system that would combine a minimum of state regulations with the responsibility of civil society, often through religious organisations. After 1945, social security became one of the main elements of the political consensus. Especially in the years from 1957 to 1967 welfare provisions were rapidly expanded. In those years, the Dutch welfare state became ‘one of the most comprehensive, generous, and passive of its sort’.Footnote ²⁸

The preference for the domination of civil society in social and health policy until the 1960s can be traced back to the religious regime of segmented pluralism. According to this view, which was advocated in particular, albeit in slightly different ways, by both orthodox Protestant and Catholic politicians, every community was entitled to the freedom to organise health and social facilities in its own way. However, during their exile in London members of the Dutch government developed the notion of a unified national social security system, in which state provisions would be more important than the freedom of communities to organise themselves. Within such a system of social security, communities would be represented by the state. This idea was inspired by international developments pertaining to social security, as expressed in the Atlantic Charter (1941) as ‘freedom from want’ and in William Beveridge's Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942).Footnote ²⁹ After the Second World War the responsibility of the national state for social provisions and health care was no longer debated. Religious divisions were suppressed in favour of a pragmatic approach, which was focused on rebuilding the country and providing citizens with much-desired security.Footnote ³⁰ The pursuit of ‘social life assurance’ for all civilians was formulated to guide post-war social policy.Footnote ³¹ Thus, instead of gifts of charity, health and social security became rights guaranteed by the state. The focus of debates about social policy therefore shifted towards questions concerning the required extent of intervention by the state.

This new notion of social security and state regulation, which proliferated throughout Western Europe, regarded individual membership of the national community as more important than membership of a religious community. However, segmented pluralism remained influential in the early post-war years. During the 1950s a set of inclusivist social laws were developed. This system included such regulations as the General Old Age Insurance Law of 1957. Although the new post-war legislation was rooted in a vision of society as a national community, (religious) civil society organisations remained dominant in its implementation during the 1950s. For example, civil society organisations could receive grants from the department for social work. According to minister Marga Klompé, this department was intended to assist private initiatives ‘in accordance with its own nature and responsibility to ensure execution of tasks’. Historian Patrick Pasture has therefore stated that the Dutch system of social security of the 1950s was ‘largely organised under public law and with public finances, but in practice the state had only limited functions while the social partners remained largely responsible for its administration, execution and even supervision’.Footnote ³² In the building up of the welfare state segmented pluralism and national unity were combined. The post-war welfare state thus bridged these two visions of the societal role of religion, which were influential at the same time.

The welfare state would also become a diachronic bridge, accommodating the transition from the regime of segmented pluralism to the regime of national unity. This transition was enabled not only by politicians’ and bureaucrats’ increasingly adopting the view of religion as a binding rather than an excluding element but also by changing opinions among both clergy and laity about their role in society. During the 1950s, religious leaders valued personal belief over collective rituals and presented themselves as critical prophets in society rather than part of the establishment.Footnote ³³ This new self-conception implied a smaller role in the field of social security. The Poor Law of 1912 had favoured private and church-related social security. This was overturned by the creation of the General Assistance Act [Algemene Bijstandswet, hereafter: ABW] at the beginning of the 1960s, often considered the keystone of the Dutch welfare state. When the law was presented to the parliament in 1962 the responsible Catholic ministers stated that it was the duty of the state to provide social security and thus eliminated the role of the churches. ‘The realization of social security and social justice’ the ministers wrote in their explanation of the law, ‘has become one of the main responsibilities of the state and is one of the characteristics of the welfare state.’Footnote ³⁴ This view was hardly controversial.

Similarly, the new self-image developed by many civil society organisations paved the way for the changes in the Dutch system of social security to match a religious regime of national unity. The trend to strive for a more professional outlook and to leave members and clients room for individual self-fulfilment loosened the ties of civil society organisations to religious communities and made these organisations look towards the state for financial support. For example, the board of management of Sonneheerdt, an orthodox Protestant institute of care for the blind drastically revised its self-image during the late 1950s and 1960s. Although they had formerly regarded both the blind and the nursing staff as different parts of the same family, management now stated that the institute was neither a home nor a guesthouse, and the ‘staff should not be regarded as family’. The board first and foremost wanted its staff to be professional: ‘There is a difference between staff today and in the past. Previously people acted out of vocation. Now they want to isolate themselves in their spare time. The blind have to let go of the idea of total care. They should emancipate’.Footnote ³⁵ The former vision of ‘total care’, which had included the joint participation in the religious life of the institute, with collective rituals such as prayers and churchgoing, was abandoned. Religious provisions were left to local churches and ministers.

On the one hand, professionalisation of care can be regarded as secularisation through differentiation.Footnote ³⁶ On the other hand, the process of professionalisation should not be regarded as just a form of secularisation. Religious inspiration remained important to organisations such as Sonneheerdt, which continued to recruit its board and staff predominantly from orthodox Protestants. However, the board and the staff took a step back from stimulating and regulating the religious life of the institute. This gradual transformation, which was brought about voluntarily in many parts of Dutch civil society, can most accurately be interpreted in terms of a shift to a new religious regime. Within this new regime religious life was primarily regarded as a matter of the individual. Professionalisation was aimed for because it was seen as the best way to supervise care-receivers’ process of self-realisation. This aim fitted the new orientation of the 1960s well: individual self-fulfilment replaced community-oriented and often hierarchical religious practices.Footnote ³⁷

Clashes and new arrangements

The growing influence of visions of national unity would result in a decisive blow to the regime of segmented pluralism in the 1960s, which may be illustrated most clearly by developments within the Catholic community. Since support for the arrangement had dwindled among social democrats around the founding of the PvdA in 1946, the majority who favoured segmented pluralism was unstable. Only Catholics and orthodox Protestants held on firmly to the ideal of segmented organisation. Small breaks in the Catholic stronghold had been evident: a group of Catholics had refused to fall in line with their bishops, who had urged their flock not to join organisations aimed at denominational inclusivity such as the PvdA.Footnote ³⁸

The issuing of a pastoral letter in 1954, which once more urged Catholic believers to remain faithful to distinct Catholic organisations, was evidence of further discord. The need for such an exhortation made it clear that not all Catholics were convinced of the need for loyalty to the ideal of segmentation. Less visible, but just as striking, was the disunity among the Dutch Catholic bishops during the writing of the letter. While one group wanted to repeat an unequivocal ban on membership in organisations the bishops had labelled dangerous, several younger bishops saw the need to leave room for the conscience and personal responsibility of believers.Footnote ³⁹ A similar insecurity about the significance of Catholicism for social commitment emerged from the bishops’ appeal to Catholic social organisations to elaborate a ‘Catholic social program’ that same year. The request was fulfilled by a group of Catholic scholars, who published a series of books titled Prosperity, Welfare and Happiness (Welvaart, welzijn en geluk), which were published between 1960 and 1965, and were eagerly received by officials looking to reformulate the identity of their Catholic organisations.Footnote ⁴⁰

With the advent of the Second Vatican Council, these attempts to formulate new positions became more pressing and more radical. In inaugurating the council, Pope John XXIII had sought to redefine the church's outlook on the world by placing an open dialogue at its centre.Footnote ⁴¹ The council regarded the church, explicitly including the laypeople, as the people of God. In its constitution, the council stated that it was the task of the clergy to support ordinary believers in fulfilling the real task of the church: to carry their Catholic faith out into the world.Footnote ⁴² The proclaimed redefinition of the relationship between laypeople and clergy as equal partners led union officials, for example, to question the role of the clerical advisor who was representing the bishops within the Catholic union. In 1964, the bishops made it known that the role of these advisors had until now been defined as custodians of church doctrine, although the board members of Catholic associations themselves were perfectly capable of making decisions in line with their faith. Clerical advisors could thenceforth be called upon for spiritual counsel but were to do so in the service of the laypeople, not as their commanders.Footnote ⁴³ The Dutch Catholic hierarchy did not only loosen the ties with its own flock, it also became more open to the idea of cooperation across denominational boundaries. Thus, in 1965 it renounced the ban on membership in the NVV.Footnote ⁴⁴ The official reaction by the Catholic union acknowledged the freedom the bishops conceded to the individual to make personal choices about social engagement.Footnote ⁴⁵ However, in private conversations with Church representatives, union officials showed signs of disorientation. What need was there for a Catholic trade union when Catholics could just as well join other unions and the practical differences between their own organisation and the NVV were increasingly negligible?Footnote ⁴⁶

Such debates about the meaning of faith for societal engagement were widespread among Catholics in the 1960s.Footnote ⁴⁷ As a result, the formerly Catholic national newspaper De Volkskrant discarded its subtitle ‘Catholic daily newspaper for the Netherlands’ in 1965.Footnote ⁴⁸ In 1967 Catholic political leadership decided to study the possibilities of a merger with its Protestant political counterparts.Footnote ⁴⁹ At the same time, discussions within the Catholic trade union resulted in the conclusion that although social engagement inspired by faith was desirable, a separate trade union was not. In the face of growing consensus between the members of the existing separate unions, a merger would result in an organisation in which Catholics could cooperate more effectively with people from different backgrounds in order to obtain the goals they were now trying to achieve independently.Footnote ⁵⁰

With this transformation of Catholic thought and organisational practice the stronghold of the regime of segmented pluralism fell. This did not, however, result in a sudden collapse of the institutionalised practice which had carried the regime up until then. Changes in the allocation of broadcasting rights may serve as an example once more. The aforementioned 1930 compromise had divided 80 per cent of the time available between a neutral, a Protestant, a Catholic and a Social Democrat association. In 1965, a new compromise was reached for radio and television broadcasting. This new regulation did not end the essential role of broadcasting associations as the organisations which developed the actual content of radio and television programs. However, the strict partition was replaced by a more fluid one, which stipulated that the amount of broadcasting time an association would receive depended on the number of members it could muster. New associations not associated with the order of segmented pluralism could thus claim airtime after the new regulations were implemented in 1969.Footnote ⁵¹ The power of the old broadcasting associations was not radically abolished by this arrangement. Instead, they were slowly but surely overshadowed by new, more popular associations – as was the case in the field of health and social services.

Contested national unity

The dominance of the religious regime of segmented pluralism, which had developed from the 1880s through to the 1920s, was overturned in the course of the 1950s to the 1970s by the combined force of Christian and secular views on national unity. Both traditions stressed the need to transcend denominational boundaries in public life and were critical of those who stressed religious difference. The common trait of these traditions can be found in their shared view that it is the responsibility of each citizen to make his or her own choices concerning societal activities. These choices could be based on religious convictions on an individual level. Social activities should, however, not be restricted to a single denominational community but rather be in accordance with bridging intentions. Thus, this new regime of national unity did not exclude religious traditions from society but called upon them to inspire purposes common to all citizens, instead of creating differences between them. For example, the Christian philosopher Feitse Boerwinkel titled one of his most influential publications Inclusive Thinking. Another Time Requires Another Way of Thinking (Inclusief denken. Een andere tijd vraagt een ander denken), pleading for a respectful encounter between different religions and world views.Footnote ⁵²

Although traces of the regimes of segmented pluralism remain visible in institutions even today, the Christian and secularist visions have been further institutionalised since the 1970s. The welfare sector, universities and social movements provide prime examples of this institutionalisation. Social movements of feminists and gays for example, which fiercely opposed the representatives of segmented pluralism, developed their own institutes thanks to subsidies from the state.Footnote ⁵³ However, until the 1990s the idea of a Christian nation was still predominant. One of the most important examples can be found in Dutch politics, where the Christian Democratic Party (Christen-Democratisch Appèl, hereafter: CDA) appeared on the stage as a Christian-democratic political party in 1980. The CDA resulted from a merger between the Catholic party and two large orthodox Protestant counterparts after a long process of deliberation. Unlike any other new organisation, this political party signified the trend towards a new understanding of religion: though professing an ecumenical Christian identity, the party stressed it welcomed anyone supporting its political goals.Footnote ⁵⁴ Its adherence to an inclusivist religious outlook can also be discerned in its politics vis-à-vis civil society. While heading government in the 1980s, its leaders proposed to restore the economy by replacing the expensive and anonymous state care by a ‘caring society’ which would rely on familial and communal care. However, this revaluation of religious civil society did not mark the return of a civil society divided by religious differences. Instead, the CDA stressed active individual citizenship aided by professional private organisations.Footnote ⁵⁵

The idea of the Christian nation did not just become a major force in Dutch politics but also on the streets. As James Kennedy has argued, religion ‘served as the motivation for the forms of social action that characterised the Netherlands from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s’.Footnote ⁵⁶ This can be seen in the Dutch peace movement, which organised vast demonstrations around 1980. Within this movement, the churches and religious organisations such as Pax Christi and IKV played a central role.Footnote ⁵⁷

The dominance of the Christian nation view declined during the 1980s, as private spirituality and churches’ local commitment became the norm – a development that led to the predominance of a secular view of the nation. The revision of the Dutch constitution in 1983 had a two-fold relevance in this respect. On the one hand it stressed the dominance of the new regime of national unity, allowing for an equal approach to any religious community based on the equality of their members. The new constitution stressed individual rights, symbolically placing the right to equal treatment of all individual citizens and their safeguarding from discrimination as the first article. On the other hand religious institutions were arguably marginalised, as references to religious institutions were eliminated, the last remaining ties to Protestant churches severed and the provision allowing the prohibition of religious processions was annulled.Footnote ⁵⁸

Opposition to the ideal of a Christian nation after the 1960s was of little consequence until the 1980s. In response to the transformations in the religious landscape some groups organised themselves on the basis of a conservative religious identity in ways that harkened back to earlier segmented communities. Evangelicals and Pietists in the Netherlands had never had a major impact on society at large, but from the 1960s onwards they constructed networks aiming to influence the public sphere. From these networks a broadcasting company was founded in 1965 and a new political party in 1975.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the 1970s and 1980s pietistic groups constructed a new network of organisations, including and independent newspaper and schools, with the aim of guarding their people against liberal Christians and the secular world.Footnote ⁶⁰ For these groups the dividing lines between believers and non-believers, and above all the line between orthodox and liberal believers, were as important as they had been to large parts of Dutch society before the Second World War. Because of the decline of the regime of segmented pluralism they were convinced they had to take new initiatives, which were modelled on practices which had been common within the communities which had been dominant in earlier days.Footnote ⁶¹

The notion of an inclusive Christian nation was more seriously contested by the vision of a united secular nation, as can be illustrated by the approach taken to Islam in Dutch society during the last decades. During the 1970s and 1980s policymakers had categorised migrants as ethnic minorities who ‘should be given a chance to emancipate while preserving and further developing their own cultural identity’, as Catholics and orthodox Protestants had done in the past. However, due to the developments of an international Islamic movement, and especially the regime change in Iran, the category of ‘Muslim migrants’ was invented, and religion became an important marker in this field of policy. Secular critics increasingly confronted the state-subsidised construction of an Islamic civil society, which had been advocated by Christian Democrats, arguing instead for the severing of relations between the state and religious organisations.Footnote ⁶²

In the 1990s this perspective on ethnic minorities was replaced by a more individualistic one which regarded integration as a two-way process. At the same time, Islam was increasingly viewed as a dangerous adversary of modern liberal democracy.Footnote ⁶³ In this respect, emphasis was and is regularly placed on the outward and exclusive elements of this religion, which are supposed to be at odds with the perception of religion as private and inclusive, as became clear from the recent prohibition of face-covering headscarves.Footnote ⁶⁴ Public debate since the 1990s tends to favour the dominance of the secular nation, with widespread support for a ban on ritual slaughter as an important indication of this in the very recent past.Footnote ⁶⁵ However, explicit attempts at marginalising Islamic communities have also reasserted the Christian character of the Dutch nation. For example, the populist politician Pim Fortuyn claimed the Netherlands was shaped by a joint Judeo-Christian-Humanist tradition, to which Islam in its current forms was ill-suited.Footnote ⁶⁶

Thus, the regime of national unity which was gradually established in the post-war years is itself an unstable coalition between a Christian and a secularist interpretation of national unity. Since the 1970s religion is mainly seen as a private matter and therefore should only assert itself in society if it serves ‘public well-being’. Although the national unity camp has also been challenged by religious groups claiming minority rights or outright criticising dominant morality, its main instability stems from the shifting balance between the distinct Christian and the secular inclusivist visions. In reacting to the challenges of religious minorities, these visions have clashed over whether to demand adhesion to secular norms or to give priority to respecting religious freedom.

Lessons from the Dutch case

The analysis of recent Dutch history through the lens of religious regimes yields fascinating insights into the way religion's role in society is defined and transformed over time. A first noteworthy observation concerns the succession of religious regimes. Transitions between religious regimes may in some instances occur as radical ruptures, but in recent Dutch history religious regimes have rather replaced each other through gradual developments in which new views of the desired role of religion came to be accepted and institutionalised even as some held on to formerly dominant views. The post-war construction of Dutch welfare as a system dominated by the state instead of by civil society is a case in point: whereas the pre-war arrangements leaned heavily on civil society, the early post-war regulations slowly shifted responsibility to the national state. A new series of laws from the late 1950s onwards completely cleared civil society of its primarily responsibilities in the domains of welfare and health.

This perspective provides an alternative perspective to the one-sided notion of religious decay since the 1960s. The gradual rise of a new religious regime of national unity, which replaced the regime of segmented pluralism, shows how religious traditions could maintain their societal presence under different arrangements. It highlights the importance of believers’ own changes in perspective during the post-war era with regard to the proper societal role of religion. It also stresses the need to look beyond religious communities in order to understand the shape of religious regimes.Footnote ⁶⁷

Second, it seems crucial to note that different religious regimes may have become dominant over time, but at least in the Dutch case, not all were accepted equally by all parts of society. The constant challenging of religious regimes is not just an important aspect of the development of single religious regimes, but also a key to understanding the ways in which transitions from one regime to the next have come to pass. Just as in many instances welfare regulations appear to have been compromises between those with different views of the societal role of religion, the regulations in the Dutch pre-war broadcasting system made allowances for both those who advocated segmented pluralism and those who adhered to visions of a unified nation. This was achieved by transferring many responsibilities to the broadcasting associations of the well-organised denominational and ideological communities but also leaving forty per cent of available broadcasting time to associations advocating other viewpoints. The new regulations of the 1960s modified this compromise in favour of the currently dominant stance by abolishing the pre-determined allocation and putting in place a system which distributed broadcasting time based on the amount of members broadcasting associations could muster.

Third, the relationship between religious traditions and religious regimes emerges as a crucial field of investigation. Whereas Van Rooden had suggested an alignment between religious regimes and the views of dominant religious groups, our own investigation has proffered a more ambiguous result. Although the consecutive religious regimes established in the Netherlands were all supported by the related views of religious communities, they could only become dominant because these views were not only shared across different religious communities but also across groups which were not related to a specific denominational tradition, such as the social democrats. Moreover, religious communities have frequently transformed their views on the preferred relationship between their faith and its societal impact. As we have pointed out, the changing relationship between religious civil society and the state resulted from a new self-perception among civic organisations themselves. Thus, views on the proper role of religion inside and outside religious communities are constantly evolving, changing the ways in which religion becomes institutionalised. In turn, these institutional arrangements have played an important role in defining both ‘proper’ religion and accepted social roles for religion in society.Footnote ⁶⁸

The characteristics of the new regime of national unity, with its preference for bridging rather than bonding social activities, and its critical stance towards those who stress difference, seems to extend beyond the realm of religion. Is this trend towards an at once more individualistic and more inclusivist interpretation of religion's role in social life fed by sources also at work in other parts of society? Regarding religion as an integral part of social history challenges the notion that religion can be regarded as an entity which can be neatly separated from other realms of society such as politics.Footnote ⁶⁹

Finally, this analysis of the Dutch case undermines a perspective which claims that the Netherlands has enjoyed a unique national development, without losing sight of the importance of the nation state in defining the social role of religion. National arrangements, especially in the fields of legislation, cooperation between the state and churches and relations between civil society and state bodies, have profoundly shaped religious regimes in the era under review. At the same time, the limits of a national perspective have come into view: not just the Catholic Church but many other religious communities also crossed state borders regarding their organisational structures.Footnote ⁷⁰ The exchange of interpretations of religious traditions has always been markedly transnational in its shape and deserve to be explored more comprehensively.

Attempts by different religious communities to position themselves within their respective nation states may have been unique episodes, but they were often informed by the attempts of communities in other parts of the world. Likewise, reactions to other groups’ actions were also important, as has been demonstrated in instances ranging from the Dutch attentiveness to the German Kulturkampf in the nineteenth century to the international debate on the relationship between Islam and the West in the twenty-first century. International treaties, including the post-war human rights declarations, also shaped the debates concerning and drew limits for the relationship between religious communities and the states in which they were situated. Regional and transnational identities have continuously challenged the dominance of national identities and the religious regimes attached to them.

European integration in particular has developed into a challenge to the dominance of religious regimes oriented towards the nation. The debates about a reference to God in the European constitution and recent decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union – for example about state funding of religious organisations which do not grant women equal rights – highlight the growing importance of transnational arenas for the mediation of the role of religion. Taking their cue from such debates, scholars of religion may at once find in Europe common ideas and practices as well as national differences, particularly in those instances where European regulations have been disputed or implemented in different manners. The concept of religious regimes may serve such future research by providing a fruitful perspective on the discourses regulating the role of religion in society.