Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T23:57:14.644Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transatlantic Pieties, Dutch Clergy in Colonial America. Edited by Leon van den Broeke, Hans Krabbendam, and Dirk Mouw. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012. xviii + 342 pp. $35.00 paper.

Review products

Transatlantic Pieties, Dutch Clergy in Colonial America. Edited by Leon van den Broeke, Hans Krabbendam, and Dirk Mouw. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012. xviii + 342 pp. $35.00 paper.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Jeremy Bangs
Jeremy Bangs*
Affiliation:
Leiden American Pilgrim Museum
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Information

Type
Book Reviews and Notes
Information
Church History , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 494
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2014 

Dirk Mouw provides an excellent introductory overview of thirteen well-written biographies of “Dutch Clergy in Colonial North America.” Familar and less familiar religious leaders in New Netherland are divided into five categories, beginning with those identified as “Pioneers,” represented by Bastiaen Jansz. Krol ([1595–1674], essay by Willem Frijhoff), Jonas Michaëlius ([1584–ca.1638], essay by Jaap Jacobs), and Everardus Bogardus ([1607–1647], essay by Willem Frijhoff). “Stabilizers” are Gideon Schaats ([1607–1694], essay by Firth Haring Fabend), Henricus Selijns ([1636–1701], essay by Jos van der Linde), and Petrus Tesschenmaecker ([c.1642–1690], essay by Dirk Mouw). “Diversifiers” are Rudolphus van Varick ([1645–1694], essay by Leon van den Broeke), Guiliam Bertholf ([1656–1726], essay by Earl Wm. Kennedy), and Laurentius van den Bosch ([c.1660?–1696], essay by Evan Haefeli). “Mediators” are represented by Archibald Laidlie ([1727–1779], essay by Joyce D. Goodfriend), Gerrit Lydekker ([1729–1794], essay by Fabend), and Eilardus Westerlo ([1738–1790], essay by Robert Naborn). Finally, the “Successors” are John Henry Livingston ([1746–1825], essay by John W. Coakley) and a fourteenth non-colonial, Cornelius van der Meulen ([1800–1876], essay by Hans Krabbendam).

Social circumstances for the Dutch Reformed ministers shifted from the early trading posts to established towns and villages, often unable to find or support qualified clergy for their established ideal. The ministers eventually served a minority in a pluralistic English colony. In the end, Laidlie and Livingston led an English-speaking Dutch Calvinist church while creating organizational structures independent from Holland's supervision. Including the final essay may reflect modern re-unification among the Dutch Reformed and “Gereformeerden,” but van der Meulen in Illinois and Michigan served a different church in different circumstances in a different time and place. The book's emphasis on the role of colonial clergy is a welcome and valuable reminder of an aspect of settlement history often overlooked.