Playing On: Re-staging the Passion after the Death of God

Front matter

Playing On: Re-staging the Passion after the Death of God

Mirella Klomp

BRILL

Contents

Preface XI List of Charts, Figures and Tables xv

Prologue 1 Beyond the Belief That God Is Dead 1 In Public Discourses God Still Seems Dead 3 After the Death of God: A New Quest for God 6 The Place of the Case in This Book 10 Metaphors and the Structure of the Book 13 Authorship 17 Positionality Statement 18

PART 1 Setting the Stage Initiative and Development 25

The Ritual: Fixed Format, Liquid Aspects 29 Format 30 Liquid Aspects 35

Producers: Shaping the Ritual 38

Public: People and Their Reception 43 Who Watches The Passion and What Do They Think of It? 44 Viewers’ Social-Structural Characteristics 46 Church Background/Affiliation 48 General Ideological Traits 49 Spirituality 50 Collective Cohesion 51

Conclusion 51

2 The Scenery: Dwellings in a Sacro-Soundscape 53 The Changing Religious Landscape 55 Transfer and Transformations of Passion Practices 58 The Sonic Aspects of Religion 65 Appadurai’s Five - Scapes 66 McAlister’s Religioscapes and Tweed's Sacroscapes 66

VIII CONTENTS

Soundscapes in Acoustemology and Theology 67 Sacro-Soundscapes 69

The Study of Sacro-Soundscapes 71

Conclusion 72

3 The Re-Appearance of God: Ana-Liturgy 74 The Procession 77 The Procession in The Passion 77 Historical Background and Cultural Context 80 A Return to God after God: Kearney’s ‘Anatheism’ 82 Encountering God in Ana-Liturgy 86 Empowering Powerlessness: Firemen in the Physical Procession 86 Letting Go of God: A Lamenting Mother on the Second Screen 89 An Epiphanic Tweet: A Grandmother Joining the Twitter-Hashtag Procession 90 Conclusion 91

PART 2 Cross-Fading Perspectives on the Play

4 Claiming Sacred Ground: A Spatial Practice 95 Space, Place and the Sacred 98 The Passion as Spatial Practice 100 Physical Space 101 Ritual Space 101 Musical Space 102 Mental Space: Appropriation 103 Contested Ground and Multidimensional Space 105 The Market Square: Object of City Marketing versus Business Interest 106 A Musical Event: Vehicle for Evangelisation or an Entertainment Show? 108 The Separation of Church and State at Stake 110 Conclusion 12

Side Light: Locus Iste. A Meditation 14

CONTENTS

5 Playing with the Sacred: A Ludic Practice ug Religious Changes in Late-Modern Societies 122 Religion and Play 124 Ludification of Culture 125 The Passion as Ludic Practice 127 General Observations 128 The Dutch Queen of Plastic Surgery in the Role of the Servant

Girl 129 After His Arrest Jesus Christ Appears in an Iconic Orange

Jumpsuit 131 An Accused Actor in the Role of Barabbas 132

Conclusion 134 Side Light: @deusludens. A Twitter Thread 136

6 Dealing with Society’s Secular Self-Understanding: A Reflexive Practice 138 Exploring Uncertainties around National Identity 141 Background: From Secular to Post-secular in European Public Life? 144 The Passion as Public Reflexivity 147 An Image of Jesus 148 Jesus in an Orange Jumpsuit: Islamic Terrorist or Christian Victim? 150 The Morality of the Actors 156 Conclusion 159

Side Light: Reflections in a Mirror. A Meditative Exegesis 163 7 Staging the Resurrection: A Public Theological Practice 166 Staging the Resurrected Jesus 168

Introductions to the Finale 168

Groningen 2014 172

Dordrecht 2019 174

Production and Broadcasting Companies Doing Theology Public Theology as a Multi-Actor Practice 178 Ritual Criticism 180

Side Light: What Is This All About? A Letter 184 The Passion Shows That the Impossible Is Possible 184 Being Turned into Guests 185

PART 3 Full-Up Finish

8 Playing On: Practical Theology after the Death of God 189 Religion as a Practice of Negotiation 189 And What about God? 191 God's Play 192 Aspects of Loss 194 Performing Practical Theology after the Death of God 196 Practical Theology as Public Theology 200 Practical Theology as Play 201

Appendix 1: Research Methodology 205 Qualitative Research 205 Meta-Theoretical Choices 206 An Ethno-Case Study 208 Methodological Account of Empirical Research 212 Participant Observation in the Square and on TV 212 Semi-Structured Interviews and Informal Conversations Digital Documents 214 Online Data Sources 214 Entering and Exiting the Field 215 Appendix 2: Tables 217 Bibliography 226 Index 246 Permissions 251

CONTENTS

Preface

A choir rehearsal in an Amsterdam church building on the Saturday before Holy Week. I am taking part in an ad hoc amateur choir that is to perform J.S. Bach’s Matthduspassion at the end of the day. During the break, the professional baritone soloist who will be singing the role of Christ comes to me and asks: “Didn't I see you in the Concertgebouw yesterday?” He is right to recognize me: I am here for fieldwork, and had been at the Concertgebouw the day before, attending a rehearsal of the same Passion performed by professionals. The baritone had seen me interview members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Choir (the choir of which he was a part).

I smile at his question, because it immediately reminds me of that famous scene in the Christian passion narrative in which Peter is recognised for the third time as one of Jesus’ followers: “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Now I am recognised — by Christ, of all people! — and we exchange phone numbers so that I can contact him later on for an interview.

Later the same week, I am in Rotterdam with two colleagues for participant observation at an open-air passion event that will be broadcast live on national television. At one point during the show we stand in the path of the camera, which catches us singing along with one of the pop songs. After the show, I find that I have received a text message from the baritone: “wTF! I turn on the telly, first thing I see is you coming in the shot!”

This series of events occurred in 2012, two years into my research project on contemporary musical performances of passions in the Dutch cultural domain, and, during this busy week, I engaged in fieldwork on far more than just these three passions. Despite the efforts of some to liberate passion performances from the Christian liturgical calendar, most passion concerts still take place during Lent, especially Holy Week. So, I found myself immersed in the field, and there were plenty of opportunities for fieldwork at multiple passion performances every day.

Research in such a rich field, of course, had its limits: it was impossible to investigate every single passion performance in depth, so the project demanded more focus. A natural choice was to concentrate on the passion that had grown the largest, and which would continue to grow further in the years that followed — a passion that, contrary to other, sometimes modern, classical music passions that were performed in classical concert halls, stood out for its inextricable link with contemporary popular culture, the public sphere, and the street: The Passion. This book is the result of that particular focus. It sheds light on one particular rendition of the narrative of the suffering, death and

XII PREFACE even (although strictly not part of the passion narrative) the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through that, the book offers a number of perspectives on how (Christian) religion has changed in the Netherlands over recent decades.

I want to extend my gratitude and thanks to those who played a part in the process that eventually led to the book. I should start by saying thank you to my colleagues at the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg School of Humanities (Tilburg University), since I embarked on my research on the ritual-musical appropriation of passions in Dutch culture in 2010 in their midst. I did so as a post-doctoral researcher on the project Religion? Music! which was originally conceived by Martin Hoondert. Martin gave me the necessary space to find my own focus, and eventually to zoom in on the passion. I should also mention, at this point, Paul Post who, whilst sparing in his use of words, has always encouraged me to find my own pathway through academia. I am grateful for the opportunities they both gave me. I also owe a word of thanks to my colleagues in the Practices research programme at the Protestant Theological University, with whom I continued my passion research within the project Passio Resurrexit in 2013 and where I adopted a more theological outlook. I want expressly to thank our sociologists of religion Joep de Hart and Marten van der Meulen who supported me with endless and indispensable sociological expertise, and my colleagues in the chair of Practical Theology in Amsterdam who have kindly hassled me with their critical questions, discussion, and feedback over the past few years. Special thanks to Marcel Barnard for his ongoing encouragement to develop cutting-edge research, and to Rein Brouwer, Joyce Rondaij, Lydia van Leersum-Bekebrede and former PThU-colleague Jos de Kock who, at different stages, read in detail and advised me on different portions and versions of this manuscript. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Dutch Lutheran Foundation ‘Stichting Luthers Diakonessenhuis Fonds’ for their financial support, as well as the rector of PThU, Mechteld Jansen, and to say how much their continuous confidence in me is appreciated! Outside of PThU, I want to thank Erin Wilson at the University of Groningen, who was kind enough to let us recruit her ReMa-student Anita Zijdemans for ethnographic research in Enschede, and I am grateful for Anita’s dedication and the data she collected. All-round theologian Peter-Ben Smit (vu University/Utrecht University/University of Bern) and Rev. Eddy Reefhuis, with his knowledge of Bible and rabbinic teaching, both deserve special mention for being such fabulous and constructive sparring partners in creative biblical hermeneutics. I say thank you to international colleagues to whom I presented some material in this book at meetings of the Societas Liturgica, at Christian Congregational Music conferences, and at the ‘Conversations after God’-consultations of PThU and the Theological Faculty of the University of Pretoria. I benefitted greatly

PREFACE XIII from the comments and suggestions of many scholars and practitioners that I received on those occasions. They have been very encouraging.

I am tremendously grateful for various informants in the field, without whom this research could never have taken place, particularly those from the audience who chatted with me in the squares where The Passion was staged. I am grateful for the support and hospitality of many individuals at the broadcasting companies KRO-NCRV and EO (as well as KRO-NCRV's predecessor RKK that initially embarked upon the project), and the production company Eye2EyeMedia (later: Mediawater) who were incredibly kind in providing me with all kinds of information, statistics and photographs, who cooperated in interviews, and who allowed me to attend their meetings. I cannot name them all here, but I want to mention Reinder van Dijk, Jacco Doornbos, Leo Fijen, Maddy Christine Hope (in New Orleans) and Arjan Lock in particular.

My co-authors Marcel Barnard, Martin Hoondert, Marten van der Meulen, Erin Wilson and Anita Zijdemans let me recompose previously published texts without any restrictions, and I thank them for their confidence in me. I here also want to acknowledge my protégé (Habilvater) during the course of my habilitation at the Theological Faculty of the University of Bern, David Pliiss, to whom I give thanks for his advice, support and guidance. I am grateful to him and to Gutachterin Andrea Bieler and Gutachter Thomas Schlag, for their reviews of the manuscript, and to the former Dean of the Faculty, Angela Berlis, for guiding me through the Habilitationsverfahren. For their constructive criticism of earlier drafts and thoroughgoing feedback on the manuscript I offer a special thank you to the chief editors and series editors of Theology in Practice and their reviewers. I also want to offer a word of thanks to Ingrid Heijckers-Velt for her patience, instruction and support throughout the writing and publication process. I am thankful that Hijme Stoffels and Hans-Peter van Velthoven let me reproduce their photographs. I owe a lot to Mark Porter, who meticulously edited the English text, and to our former student-assistant Esther van Bijsterveldt, for her dedicated work on the bibliography and footnotes.

The road to the completion of this manuscript has been bumpier than any publication process I have been part of so far. The main obstacle on the road was a life-threatening illness that has driven my research subject into my personal life in a way I wish I would never otherwise have experienced. If it were not for the medical staff, and a circle of close colleagues, friends and family who have surrounded me during this period and kept me alive, this book would never have seen publication. For their care and support I am grateful beyond words. I want, in particular, to mention my good friends Eddy Reefhuis, Paul Sheppy, who kept me going during this period of turbulence. I thank my

XIV PREFACE mother, and Jacco, Swaentje and Jasmijn Calis for their love and their generosity (they gave me so much time and space to write).

This book is dedicated to my daughters, who grow up in a society where Christian religion is rapidly changing, and where the quest for God may well become even more challenging than it has been for me.

Charts, Figures and Tables u

Charts

Frequency of viewing classified by the number of situations in which respondents claim to have felt united with other Dutch people 45

Viewers who have watched The Passion at least once, according to birth cohort (percent) 46

Appreciation of The Passion among those who have watched one or more times, according to birth cohort (percent) 47

Figures

Viewing figures of The Passion for respective editions 25

The HJ. Van Heek Square in Enschede where the main stage for The Passion was erected in 2015. Photo: Michaél Terlouw. © Eo. Reproduced with permission of EO’s Marketing & Communication Dpt. 26

Singer Do as Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Passion in Gouda, 2011. Photo:

© Hijme Stoffels. Reproduced with permission 33

Market Square in Gouda, 2011. Photo: © Hijme Stoffels. Reproduced with permission 34

The temporary dwelling of a passion performed on the Grote Markt in the city of Groningen in 2014. Photo: Willem-Jan de Bruin. © Eo. Reproduced with permission of EO's Marketing & Communication Dpt. 70

Overview of round numbers of participants in the virtual procession on the second screen 79

Firemen carrying the neon-lit cross. Photo: Rogier van den Berg. © Rrv Oost. Reproduced with permission of RTV Oost 88

The procession with the cross passing the audience in the Market square in the city of Gouda while making its way to the main stage. Photo: © Hijme Stoffels. Reproduced with permission 102

Mental spaces that may influence the appropriation of The Passion 105 Pictures from the second photo shoot with Jesus, 2015. Photo: © Hans-Peter van Velthoven. Reproduced with permission 149

The Jesus character in an orange coverall with two soldiers after his conviction in The Passion, Enschede, 2015. Photo: Arianne Ramaker. © EO. Reproduced with permission of Eo’s Marketing & Communication Dpt. 151

XVI

13 14

CHARTS, FIGURES AND TABLES

Christian victims of sts led to their execution on a Libyan beach. Screenshot from a YouTube-video posted by Isis on February 16, 2015 152

Poster for the Pandora Foundation 164

Television director David Grifhorst in the mobile production unit in 2015. Screenshot from a Youtube-video. Image: EO/KRO-NRCV 167

Singer Syb van der Ploeg as the resurrected Jesus on the tower of the St Jan’s Church in Gouda. Photo: © ANP 171

The resurrected Jesus (by singer Jan Dulles) appearing amongst people in the square in the 2014 edition of The Passion. Screenshot from the online broadcast of The Passion. Image: EO/KRO-NRCV 174

The resurrected Jesus (by Edwin Jonker) appearing on top of the Dordrecht Minster above the square in the 2019 edition of The Passion. Screenshot from the online broadcast of The Passion. Image: EO/KRO-NRCV 175

The online time-shifted viewing screen for The Passion in 2018 presented a number of video clips and broadcasts. From left to right: the talk show ‘Passiontalk’ (featuring me), the 2018 edition of The Passion, and three brief digital interviews with performers which were launched via socials in the days prior to the performance. Screenshot from www.npostart.nl. Image: NPO 213

Number of times that people watched the Tv-broadcast of The Passion or attended the event 217

Assessment of organisation and depiction of The Passion 217

Frequency of viewing and rating classified by viewers’ characteristics 218 Assessment classified by social-structural characteristics (for viewers who have watched at least once) 219

Frequency of viewing and assessment classified by church background/ affiliation 220

Frequency of viewing and assessment classified by the number of situations in which people consider religion to have an important role 221

Frequency of viewing and assessment classified by the number of situations in which people consider religion to have an important role, in detail 222 Number of times that people watched the Tv-broadcast of The Passion or attended the event in relation to their religious/spiritual

self-identification 223

Assessment of organisation and depiction of The Passion in relation to people's religious/spiritual self-identification 223

CHARTS, FIGURES AND TABLES XVII

10 Frequency of viewing and assessment classified by spiritual interest and practices 224

u Frequency of viewing and assessment classified by situations in which respondents feel united with other Dutch people 225

Prologue

Beyond the Belief That God Is Dead

The Netherlands has a stubborn image as one of the most secularised countries in Western Europe. On international journeys, I frequently find myself being asked to confirm to people that, although my country still has churches and churchgoers, ministers and priests, and even theologians, Christianity is indeed receding in Dutch culture (in the same sentence I am also often asked to confirm that everyone in the Netherlands smokes pot, but that is not the topic of this book). A similar idea is all too often conveyed in Dutch public discourse: over recent decades, the Dutch have gradually left their Christian (predominantly Calvinist) roots behind, and their society is on the verge of attaining a, frequently glorified, secular status.!

Both examples reflect widely spread secularisation discourses in which the ‘traditional’ secularisation thesis seems still alive. This is, however, strikingly at odds with how scholars in the past two decades have come to think about religion and secularisation: they generally agree that the secularisation thesis, as a thesis, is dead. Many of them acknowledge that processes of secularisation (such as, e.g., ‘internal secularisation’: a secularisation of people's religious longing”) are going on, and that the rise of science and reason have caused large alterations in society that also affect religion, religious practices and religious affiliation. However, the thesis that religion dies out as modernisation progresses is and has overall been rebutted by scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, such as, for example, the famous sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger,? political scientists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart,* and

1 On the debate regarding secularisation narratives in Western Europe in the 1950s, see Herman Paul, “The Sociological Myth. A 1954 Controversy on Secularization Narratives’, Journal of Religion in Europe g (2016), 201-224. Paul mentions an observation by Dutch theologian Berkhof in 1954 that time and again church periodicals in the stories used formulations which included the words “still” and “no longer”. “Pastors write that “part of the congregation still visits the Sunday service’, while others complain that “the youth is no longer interested in matters of religion”. Paul, “The Sociological Myth’, 208.

2 Herman Paul, De slag om het hart. Over secularisatie van verlangen (Utrecht: Boekencentrum, 2017).

3 Aslong ago as 1999, Berger published a book entitled The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent religion and world politics. Berger, at that time, did not falsify secularisation theses, but claimed to have identified processes of counter-secularisation within cultures and societies. Cf. Peter L. Berger, The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington, D.C./Grand Rapids, MI: Ethics and Public Policy Center; Eerdmans, 1999).

4 In 2004, in their book Sacred and Secular. Religion and Politics Worldwide, political scientists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart stated that “secularization theory is currently experiencing

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc By-NC 4.0 license.

philosopher Charles Taylor.5 In the Dutch context, scholars who engage in empirical research on contemporary religious practices in the Netherlands have shown that religion has not disappeared, but has instead deeply altered. They have concluded that secular and the religious are not as opposed to each other as Western scholars long assumed.”

the most sustained challenge in its long history”. Cf. Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3. They took an important step in revising the ‘traditional’ secularisation thesis, stating that in developed countries religious institutions and their authorities were indeed in decline, however, ‘spiritual concerns’ (relating to the meaning and purpose of life) were becoming increasingly important. Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular, 75.

5 Charles Taylor in 2007 published A Secular Age, an ambitious work that would become a best-seller in which he addressed not so much the increasing marginalisation of religion from the spheres of public life, or the decline of religious belief and practices, but focused on what he calls a third type of secularity. This type does not so much point to an absence of religion, but rather to the fragmentation and continuing multiplication of new options to make sense of our world and to give shape to their spiritual ambitions, in a universe that does not turn around a central point. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 2-3.

6 A landmark was the publication of a voluminous research report by The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR; an independent advisory body for government policy) in 2006. Cf. Wim van de Donk, A.P. Jonkers, GJ. Kronjee and RJJ.M. Plum, eds, Geloven in het publieke domein. Verkenningen van een dubbele transformatie, WRR Verkenningen 13 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), https://www.wrr.nl/publicaties/verkenningen/2006/12/19/geloven-in-het-publiek-domein -verkenningen-van-een-dubbele-transformatie---13. Also see Joep de Hart, Paul Dekker and Loek Halman, Religion and Civil Society in Europe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). For a more extensive list of references, see Chapter 2.

7 In practical theology, this opposition has, for example, been countered by Elaine Graham in an interesting publication that deals with the legitimacy of religious voices in public life and develops proposals for a Christian apologetics of presence. Cf. Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (London: scm Press, 2013). Stephen Pattison had already emphasised, with reference to Don Browning, that faith, worldviews and belief systems not only inform the practices of religious, but also secular institutions. Cf. Stephen Pattison, The Challenge of Practical Theology. Selected Essays (London: Jessica Kingsley 2007), 11. Also cf. Tom Beaudoin (ed.), Secular Music and Sacred Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 2013), x, where the editor mentions that his edited volume aims to demonstrate that and how (secular/popular) music is related to things religious, spiritual, sacred and/or to God. It is important to realize, however, that the religious-secular dichotomy is a contextual one. This contextuality must not be overlooked: the construction of a religious-secular divide has proven to be problematic in non-Western cultures and worldviews. Several practical theologians have, for instance, rightly emphasised the importance of recognising the differences between Western and African ‘spiritual ontologies’ (cf. Lars Charbonnier, Johan Cilliers, Matthias Mader, Cas Wepener and Birgit Weyel (eds.), Pluralisation and social change. Dynamics of lived religion in South Africa and in Germany

PROLOGUE 3 In Public Discourses God Still Seems Dead

The thesis that unbelief rules out belief is kept alive in secularisation discourses, though, influenced by, among others, (secular) media and the attention they pay to quantitative research results that point to receding Christianity. In the wake of Friedrich Nietzsche's famous declaration: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’, news coverage on Christian religion often presents the Netherlands as a post-Christian nation and God as being incredibly dead in this country.® This image was, for instance, on show in newspapers and TV and radio programs in March 2016, after the publication of the decennial quantitative study God in Nederland (GIN):

The Netherlands are no longer a Christian nation. This is the main conclusion of the research project God in Nederland that is undertaken among more than 2100 Dutch people by KRO once every ten years. A large

(Berlin: De Gruyter 2018), 3. DOI: 10.1515/9783110569810). South African practical theologian Jaco Dreyer has discussed the genesis of the secularisation theory and proposed the value of a ‘constitutional theory’ which he offers as a potentially more fruitful alternative. Cf. Dreyer, “Do we live in a secular world? An African perspective’, in: Wilhelm Grab and Lars Charbonnier (eds.), Secularization Theories, Religious Identity and Practical Theology. Developing International Practical Theology for the 21st Century (International Practical Theology, vol. 7) (Miinster/Ziirich: Lit Verlag 2009), 35-62. Reflecting on a particular public ceremony, Emmanuel Lartey demonstrated that a ritual organised by a government official in the environment of a secular state department, contributed to “postcolonialising God’, thus vanquishing the (colonial) idea that religious activities are bound to religious institutions and religious people. Cf. Emmanuel Lartey, “Postcolonial African practical theology. Rituals of remembrance, cleansing, healing and re-connection’, Journal of Pastoral Theology 21/2 (2011), 1-17. DOI: 10.1179/jpt.2011.21.2.002. Also interesting in this respect is the fact that two Brazilian theologians saw opportunities for dialogue between the (British) Harry Potter literary series and the eucharistic liturgy, taking ‘lived religion’ as a hermeneutic instrument with which to connect religious experiences and pop cultural reflections with ecclesial or doctrinal discussions. Cf. Ivan Kiper Malacarne and Julio Cézar Adam, “Comensais da morte ou da vida? Contribuições da religião vivida para a teologia cristã a partir da série literária Harry Potter” (‘Death or life Eaters? Contributions of lived religion to Christian theology from the Harry Potter literary series”), Tear Online 8/2 (2019), 114-126.

8 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) par. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. and transl. (New York: Vintage, 1974), 181.

g Christian media form an exception: smaller national Christian newspapers like Nederlands Dagblad and Reformatorisch Dagblad do not share in this overall negative attitude towards religion. Other exceptions are a few particular journalists working for large national newspapers such as NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant, who occasionally show a more open attitude towards (Christian) religion when writing about religious matters. The most striking change of stances regarding Christian religion and church (from rather sceptical to more open) was observed in the past five years in the religion section of Dagblad Trouw.

majority, 82 percent, never or hardly ever visits a church. And a large majority hold the opinion that religion should no longer play a determining role in politics and education.!®

Quantitative investigations like these feed the secularisation discourse in Dutch society, because their results are as plain as day, and easy to convey: traditional Christian belief has crumbled in Dutch society, and the decline of church membership and church attendance that had started decades ago, has kept going: 71% of the respondents in 2016 had no affiliation with a church of religious group, 59% never attended church services (or other religious meetings) and 23% rarely did so." According to 52% of the respondents, religion is a personal matter that should be limited to the private sphere}? The survey that was used in this research measured, among other things, to what extent people subscribed to Christian beliefs, whether people engaged in ‘traditional’ Christian practices such as prayer and reading the bible, or whether they performed other practices such as walking silent marches or lighting a candle for someone. Other quantitative research, e.g. by The Netherlands Institute for Social Research (scp) and Statistics Netherlands (CBs), shows similar results.!3

It is a known and irrefutable fact that the institutionalised church has faced tough times over the last decades and processes of ‘de-churching’ have progressed rapidly. Church buildings have been closed, sold or demolished and many Christian congregations and parishes have merged in order to consolidate numbers. There is lack of money, a lack of younger members, and a lack of volunteers to do all the ecclesial work. The ‘traditional’ way of living Christian faith is under pressure and no longer fits what many people are looking for. Despite churches’ missionary initiatives, churches as well as Christian be-

10 ANP (Netherlands national news agency), “Hoe God (bijna) verdween uit Nederland”, 13 March 2016. http://nos.nl/artikel/2092498-hoe-god-bijna-verdween-uit-nederland.html. Last accessed May 10, 2020.

11 The research God in Nederland was first conducted in 1966 by order of Dutch broadcasting company KRO, in order to investigate the condition of Christian religion in the Netherlands.

12 Ton Bernts and Joantine Berghuijs, God in Nederland 1966-2015 (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2016), 207-222.

13 Cf. Joep de Hart and Pepijn van Houwelingen, Christenen in Nederland. Kerkelijke deelname en christelijke gelovigheid (Den Haag: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, 2018); Schmeets, Hans, Wie is religieus en wie niet? Statistic Trends (cBs), oktober 2018 (PDFfile), obtained via https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/achtergrond/2018/43/wie-is-religieus-en-wie -niet-. Last accessed May 10, 2020.

liefs are in a critical condition.* This decline ought to be seen as part of a broader, Western situation; the decrease of institutionalised Christianity is not distinctively Dutch, as research on, for example, Britain!® and the USA shows.” Those who form their judgments purely on the basis of such quantitative research reports cannot but conclude that in the Western world, institutionalised Christianity religion is in fact disappearing.

In the last decade, a strong missionary wind has risen in churches of various denominations. E.g. in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (that had around 1.85 million members on 1 January 2017), where some 100 “pioneer projects” throughout the country were initiated in order to search for new, and more diverse forms of being church that intend to bring the gospel to more and different people than those who are already involved in and/or part of church congregations. Source: “Statistische jaarbrief en tabellenboek 2017.pdf”, Protestantse Kerk in Nederland. https://www.protestantsekerk .nl/data/import/cbacfc1245f8b6a07091a0975e€47520e.pdf. Last accessed May 10, 2020. Another example is the smaller Reformed church denomination Gereformeerde Kerken vrijgemaakt, that in 2015 also initiated second generation church planting projects. Source: “GKv werkt mee aan 40-tal kerkplantingsprojecten’, Gereformeerde Kerken vrijgemaakt. https://www.gkv.nl/gkv-werkt-mee-aan-40-tal-kerkplantingsprojecten/. Last accessed October 4, 2019.

A global perspective on Christianity shows deep changes. Contrary to a decline in the West, Christianity in the global south (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) is seeing an explosive expansion. Cf. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom. The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).