From the birth of the nation until the latter part of the twentieth century the Reformed Church played an important role at the heart of Dutch society. Even in 1900 almost half the population adhered to the Church. Since that time the onward march of secularisation has accelerated to the extent that church membership had fallen to 13 per cent of the population by 1998. These stark realities have stimulated a process of intellectual reflection and institutional change more profound than at any point in the Church's history. In 1969 different Churches of the Reformed tradition together with the Lutherans began a process of dialogue that ended in 2003 with formal reunification; all these Churches, in any case, now place far more stress on community life at a congregational level than on previously controversial matters of doctrine and practice. Karel Blei's purpose here is to place these changes in a historical context going back to the beginnings of the Dutch Reformed Church in the sixteenth century. The survey of the foundation years is brisk rather than detailed, and Blei provides a clear exposition of the great nineteenth-century movements of controversy and renewal, the Afscheiding and Doleantie, and their consequences for church organisation. It is less insightful with respect to the consequences of the Second World War, where the experience of occupation is normally credited with a major role in eroding divisions between different Churches, and finally ending the quintessentially Dutch phenomenon of separate confessional development or pillarisation. While for the most part this brief survey is clear-minded and lucid, it will most engage those whose interests lie primarily in contemporary church issues.