In Heaven's Wrath, D. L. Noorlander explores the role of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in the colonial and commercial efforts of the West India Company (WIC) in the early modern Atlantic world. By meticulously mining the archives of the DRC and WIC, Noorlander reveals that “a deep religious sensibility and social, institutional commitment to the Dutch Reformed Church and its politics permeated the WIC,” which not only influenced its plans and activities, but also damaged Dutch imperial interests in Africa and the Americas (218–219).

The first two chapters are set in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. In the newly austere Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam, Reverend Petrus Plancius delivered sermons that not only touched on the standard Dutch Reformed triad of creation, fall, and redemption but also championed Dutch exploration and trade around the world. Like Plancius, the leaders of the Classis of Amsterdam and the Classis of Walcheren (Zeeland) were excited about the possibilities the WIC offered for destroying the Catholic Habsburgs and spreading the Reformed faith abroad and threw their support behind the company. As for the directors of the WIC, most were full members of the DRC who demonstrated a serious commitment to Reformed orthodoxy and regularly sat on Dutch Reformed church councils and consistories. It should come as no surprise then that Dutch Reformed church councils and consistories worked with the WIC on all colonial religious matters or that WIC chambers, directors, merchants, and employees participated in Dutch Reformed charity efforts to assist widowed and orphaned Protestants both at home and abroad. Having established the fact that the DRC and WIC worked as one at home, Noorlander crisscrosses the Atlantic in the subsequent six chapters. In so doing, he shows how these institutions worked together to supervise religious matters on the company's fleets and in Dutch forts and settlements in the Greater Caribbean, New Netherland, West Africa, and Brazil between the company's founding in 1621 and its acceptance of bankruptcy in 1674.

The strengths of Heaven's Wrath far outweigh any shortcomings. Still, some terminology and assertions bear comment. In the spirit of equity, Black, Brown, and Indigenous scholars and their allies have convinced stylebooks to capitalize Black, Indigenous, and White when referring to groups of people with a shared ethnic or racial identity. Yet, the Cornell Press uses the lowercase form. Citing Jan Jongeneel (“The Missiology of Gisbertus Voetius,” Calvin Theological Journal 26 [1991]: 51), Noorlander states that the Dutch theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) was “the first Protestant thinker to formulate a ‘comprehensive theology of mission’” (27). However, as Leendert Joosse shows in Reformatie en zending: Bucer en Walaeus; vaders van reformatorische zending (Oosterbaan and Le Cointre, 1988), the father of Reformed missions was the German Protestant reformer Martin Bucer (1491–1551) who, in 1550, outlined a theology of mission in De Regno Christi (On the Kingdom of Christ) which he wrote for the young English king, Edward VI, the son and successor of Henry VIII (91). Noorlander also reinforces the popular misconception that Indigenous peoples were averse to change (87). When translating the word heidenen from the original early modern Dutch, he uses the word heathen (30, 165, 185–186). Yet, the context, translations, and accompanying footnotes of the texts most widely read by Dutch Reformed clergy show that the authors and translators used the word heidenen to mean Gentiles or non-Jews. Original early modern Dutch records housed in England, the Netherlands, and the United States also show that Reverend Johannes Megapolensis—who, prior to his conversion to Calvinism, was trained at the Jesuit College in Köln—adapted the Jesuit missionary approach in New Netherland like his colleagues in Brazil; that working in “isolation” was not an obstacle to conversion; that Dutch Reformed clergy were able to “overcome Indian reticence and outright opposition to the Protestant religion” in New Netherland; and that “strong cultural bonds” did, in fact, develop between Calvinists and Indians in New Netherland (165, 176, 183, 185, 187). Native Americans successfully converted their New Netherlander neighbors to certain aspects of their way of life, and vice versa. Indeed, by 1698, approximately 8 percent of the adult Kanien'kehà:ka (Mohawk) population had become communicant members of the DRC, which was no small feat for these individuals given the literate nature of Protestantism and, to quote Noorlander, the “near-impossible requirements for potential converts” (166).

These minor critiques aside, Heaven's Wrath is a groundbreaking work that will become the standard for those seeking to understand the role of the DRC and WIC in the early modern Atlantic world. Noorlander takes a broad, comparative approach to his subject that will appeal to a wider audience and rescue the WIC from New Netherland, “whose place,” he correctly asserts, “doesn't justify its profound influence on nineteenth- and twentieth-century views of the company” (4). Indeed, the sweeping nineteenth-century narratives of John Fiske, Edmund O'Callaghan, and John Brodhead placed the Dutch colony of New Netherland in the context of the political development of New York and the United States. They concluded that New Netherland failed and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the WIC. The members of the WIC, they argued, were authoritarian and greedy. Then, in Religious Factors in Early Dutch Capitalism, 1550–1650 (Mouton and Company, 1967), Jelle C. Riemersma insisted that the early modern Dutch divorced business and religion, which, as Noorlander insightfully points out, relates to the most common claims regarding Dutch expansion: in the interest of profit, the WIC neglected ecclesiastical needs overseas; to cut costs and work with compliant clergy, the WIC hired incompetent men whose main purpose was to serve company employees; the WIC, and the Dutch in general, were too tolerant to be strict Calvinists and not interested in conducting mission work among Indigenous peoples; and Dutch colonies lacked European institutions. Focusing on the more neglected sphere of Dutch expansion, Noorlander rightly rejects this spiritual-secular dichotomy and essentialism.