This book on the Dutch Reformed minister Hendrik P. Scholte (1803–68) offers a detailed reconstruction of the main ideas used to justify the first major secession from the established Reformed Church in the Netherlands. The author is well versed in the theological world of the Dutch Calvinist tradition. The book's importance lies in its ability to explain just what is necessary for a religious protest movement to grow into a coherent and alternative church structure. It is especially valuable because it describes how a far-flung protest movement, from different regions with different expectations, can become a cohesive force for change. The author succeeds in showing that Hendrik Scholte mounted a defence so rational and historical that it saved those who wanted to secede from being dismissed as nitwits and nobodies. The qualities that were crucial in the first phase of the secessionist movement, however, proved disruptive during the period when an actual organisational structure had to be built. Scholte strongly challenged the authority of the ecclesiastical and civic leaders. They responded by forcefully suppressing his alleged lack of deference to the newly centralised Dutch state. To civic leaders, Scholte's resistance sounded like a conservative return to the stagnation of their predecessor – the Dutch Republic. The new state desired to modernise and unify the country, incorporating religious believers into the forward motion. Though the Seceders’ beliefs were orthodox, one can also see a modern element in their resistance to the monopoly of the protected Church. It was their claim to exclusive purity that triggered a repressive response. This sequence of action and reaction might be considered the birth pangs of modern pluralism. The book offers a view from inside the justification debate, though it does not locate this debate explicitly within a broader cultural context. Failing to provide this broader context may be the result of the secondary literature studied, which by and large is dated, often fifty years old. Since then religious historians have shown how this debate was fuelled by religious practices, pushed forward by the fact that it presented the option of identifying with tradition or with modern efficiency, and energised by the competition over local autonomy versus national authority. Scholte's well-respected independent position provided a stronghold from which to defend separation, but when the need arose to create an alternative structure his unimpeachable status proved a burden. Scholte resisted hierarchy and embraced congregationalism. This book does a wonderful job of explaining this tension. There is a second irony in Scholte's story, however. In this portrayal we learn that this proto-American with sympathy for millennialism, for the separation of Church and State and for democracy, found little approval in the country to which he had emigrated in 1847. It is regrettable that this striking cultural transition receives only one chapter in the book and Scholte's impact through his students is absent. Nevertheless, this systematic exposition of Scholte's ideas is an important building block for a full biography of one of the most original Dutch thinkers in the US.