The Battle for the Sabbath in the Dutch Reformation
The Battle for the Sabbath in the Dutch Reformation

Author: Kyle J. Dieleman

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2019-01-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783525570609

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Kyle J. Dieleman focuses on the doctrinal and practical importance of Sunday observance in the early modern Reformed communities in the Low Countries. My project investigates the theological import of the Sabbath and its practical applications. The first step is to focus on how Dutch Reformed theologians conceived of the Sabbath. The theology of the Sabbath, I argue, moves over time from an emphasis on spiritual rest to participating in the ministries of the church to a strict rest from all work and recreation. The next step is to explore congregants’ actual Sunday practices. By attending to church governance records at the national, regional, and local levels the importance of proper Sabbath observance quickly becomes clear. The provincial synod records, classes’ records, and consistory records indicate that church authorities were adamant that church members faithfully attend sermon and catechism services, refrain from sinful practices, and abstain from recreational activities. Equally as telling as the observance demanded of church members is how church authorities responded. The church records portray these authorities as fretting over the disordered and unregulated nature of improper Sabbath observance. Having established the importance of the Sabbath in Dutch Reformed theology and lived piety, I argue the emphasis on Sunday observance is best understood as resulting from two main factors. First, the emphasis on proper Sunday observance is a result of the Reformed church authorities attempting to maintain the pious reputation of the Reformed faith and establish the identity of the Reformed Church amid multiple other confessional identities. Second, proper observance of the Sabbath was important because it ensured order within the church and society more broadly.

Arminius
Arminius

Author: Carl Bangs

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 1998-09-04

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1725206838

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A definitive biography of the intriguing and controversial Dutch thinker of the late sixteenth - early seventeenth centuries. Not merely a biography in the traditional sense, the book involves much intellectual history as well as a short history of Amsterdam.

Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic
Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic

Author: Judith Pollmann

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780719056802

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How did people learn their Bibles in the Middle Ages? Did church murals, biblical manuscripts, sermons or liturgical processions transmit the Bible in the same way?This book unveils the dynamics of biblical knowledge and dissemination in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England. An extensive and interdisciplinary survey of biblical manuscripts and visual images, sermons and chants, reveals how the unique qualities of each medium became part of the way the Bible was known and recalled; how oral, textual, performative and visual means of transmission joined to present a surprisingly complex biblical worldview. This study of liturgy and preaching, manuscript culture and talismanic use introduces the concept of biblical mediation, a new way to explore Scriptures and society. It challenges the lay-clerical divide by demonstrating that biblical exegesis was presented to the laity in non-textual means, while the 'naked text' of the Bible remained elusive even for the educated clergy.

Dutch Chicago
Dutch Chicago

Author: Robert P. Swierenga

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2002-11-07

Total Pages: 940

ISBN-13: 9780802813114

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Now at least 250,000 strong, the Dutch in greater Chicago have lived for 150 years "below the radar screens" of historians and the general public. Here their story is told for the first time. In Dutch Chicago Robert Swierenga offers a colorful, comprehensive history of the Dutch Americans who have made their home in the Windy City since the mid-1800s. The original Chicago Dutch were a polyglot lot from all social strata, regions, and religions of the Netherlands. Three-quarters were Calvinists; the rest included Catholics, Lutherans, Unitarians, Socialists, Jews, and the nominally churched. Whereas these latter Dutch groups assimilated into the American culture around them, the Dutch Reformed settled into a few distinct enclaves -- the Old West Side, Englewood, and Roseland and South Holland -- where they stuck together, building an institutional infrastructure of churches, schools, societies, and shops that enabled them to live from cradle to grave within their own communities. Focusing largely but not exclusively on the Reformed group of Dutch folks in Chicago, Swierenga recounts how their strong entrepreneurial spirit and isolationist streak played out over time. Mostly of rural origins in the northern Netherlands, these Hollanders in Chicago liked to work with horses and go into business for themselves. Picking up ashes and garbage, jobs that Americans despised, spelled opportunity for the Dutch, and they came to monopolize the garbage industry. Their independence in business reflected the privacy they craved in their religious and educational life. Church services held in the Dutch language kept outsiders at bay, as did a comprehensive system of private elementary and secondary schools intended to inculcate youngsters with the Dutch Reformed theological and cultural heritage. Not until the world wars did the forces of Americanization finally break down the walls, and the Dutch passed into the mainstream. Only in their churches today, now entirely English speaking, does the Dutch cultural memory still linger. Dutch Chicago is the first serious work on its subject, and it promises to be the definitive history. Swierenga's lively narrative, replete with historical detail and anecdotes, is accompanied by more than 250 photographs and illustrations. Valuable appendixes list Dutch-owned garbage and cartage companies in greater Chicago since 1880 as well as Reformed churches and schools. This book will be enjoyed by readers with Dutch roots as well as by anyone interested in America's rich ethnic diversity.

Heaven’s Wrath
Heaven’s Wrath

Author: D. L. Noorlander

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1501740334

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Heaven's Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. D. L. Noorlander argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences across the seventeenth century. Dutch merchants, officers, sailors, and soldiers found in their faith an ideology and justification for mercantile and martial activities. The West India Company supported the Reformed Church financially in Europe and helped spread Calvinism to other continents, while Calvinist employees and colonists benefitted from the familiar aspects of religious instruction and public worship. Yet, Noorlander argues, the church-company union also encouraged destructive military operations against Catholic enemies abroad and divisive campaigns against sinners and religious nonconformers in colonial courts. Religious fervor, violence, and intolerance imposed financial and demographic costs that the small Dutch Republic and its people-strapped colonies could not afford. At the same time, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands undermined its own religious mission by trying to control colonial hires, publications, and organization from afar. Noorlander's argument in Heaven's Wrath questions the core assumptions about why the Dutch failed to establish a durable empire in America. He downplays the usual commercial explanations and places the focus instead on the tremendous expenses incurred in the Calvinist-backed war and the Reformed Church's meticulous, worried management of colonial affairs. By pinpointing the issues that hampered the size and import of the Dutch Atlantic world, Noorlander is poised to revise core notions about the organization and aims of the Dutch empire, the culture of the West India Company, and the very shape of Dutch society....

Reformation and the Practice of Toleration
Reformation and the Practice of Toleration

Author: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-09-16

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 900435395X

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Reformation and the Practice of Toleration examines the remarkable religious toleration that characterized Dutch society in the early modern era. It shows how this toleration originated, how it functioned, and how people of different faiths interacted, especially in ‘mixed’ marriages.

The Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries
The Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries

Author: Alastair Duke

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2003-12-19

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1852853980

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The Revolt of the Netherlands has long been familiar to English-speaking readers, but the Reformation there has remained largely a closed book. The Reformation in the Low Countries developed along very different lines from German Lutheranism. While the decentralised character of political authority ensured the survival of religious dissent, a prolonged persecution of heresy postponed the formation of public Protestant churches until after 1572. Conflicting interests and beliefs, as well as the war and political struggle, shaped the final religious outcome. Local considerations and individual responses played their part alongside the decisions of rulers, whether Philip II and his lieutenant, the duke of Alva, or William the Silent. Alastair Duke's work is of central importance to a proper understanding of both Reformation and Revolt.

Pre-Reformation Religious Dissent in the Netherlands, 1518-1530
Pre-Reformation Religious Dissent in the Netherlands, 1518-1530

Author: J. Alton Templin

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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Although much of Protestant Reformation history focuses on movements in Germany, Switzerland, and France, during the 16th Century the Netherlands was the site of some of the earliest instances of pre-reformation religious dissent. During the 1520s, no "figurehead" led the movement in the Netherlands; instead six theological tracts by six individual scholars voiced religious dissent. These dissenting theological ideas were based on either Northern Renaissance or Biblical Humanist scholarship--most notably Erasmus--or the writing and monastic students of Martin Luther. These tracts emphasized the need for renewed biblical study; spiritual rather than literal interpretations of the Medieval Church's rituals; re-evaluation of the status quo; and a revised interpretation of the authority of the Bible. This period of inquiry and religious and social unrest was the foundation for impending changes in the Netherlands, and the rest of Europe. Using primary historical data from the trials of suspected heretics and the works of the aforementioned theologians, only one of which has appeared in English, Pre-Reformation Religious Dissent in the Netherlands, 1518-1530 is a comprehensive study of role of the Netherlands in the Protestant Reformation.