The government of the most liberal nation in Europe is refusing to support the fundamentalist Christian party SGP. After weeks of negotiations, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the government’s rejection of an agreement with the ultra-conservative Calvinists, before Parliament.
Their votes in the Senate would have been invaluable to the PM, who lacks a majority in the upper house.
Founded in 1918, the SGP has always been a strictly opposition party, sending two or three representatives to Parliament who were elected mostly in the Dutch “Bible belt”.
Women were allowed to join the party in 2006, but are still not allowed to run as candidates for party leadership. To support the government, they had requested a series of restrictive measures for legislation on gay rights and euthanasia.
The small Dutch party, SGP (Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partijm or Reformed Political Party), holds the strictest Calvinist vision of society. It is the oldest political group in the Netherlands, with a platform so extreme that in its more than ninety years of existence, it has always been in the opposition.
It fights against gay rights and the emancipation of women, aspires to a theocratic State, supports the death penalty, and rejects abortion, euthanasia, and prenatal diagnosis. The SGP’s electorate is found mainly in the Netherlands’ “Bible belt”, which runs from Zealand through the south of the country to Overijssel.
The SGP benefits from the lack of a barrier in the Netherlands to parties that do not exceed a threshold percentage of votes. For reasons of principle, SGP adherents do not purchase insurance - even car insurance.
Vaccinations are also unpopular, because “healthy people don’t need a doctor.” Mark Rutte, head of the government formed by the VVD (Liberal) and the CDA (Christian Democrats), has long sought not only the support of right-wing populist Geert Wilders, but also the fundamentalist Calvinist SGP.
During the last election, in fact, the coalition government narrowly missed taking the majority in the Senate, with 37 seats out of 75. The SGP could provide the missing Senator.
In short, they are a fragment from the past in the extremely secular Holland of today.
In truth, over the centuries the Netherlands have been a laboratory of ideas and turmoil for Christianity.
In fact, Protestantism was welcomed in the Netherlands by the educated and powerful middle class that had begun to form during the Middle Ages. Emperor Charles V tried to stop the spread of Protestant doctrines, burning Luther’s books and instituting the Inquisition in 1522.
But these measures did not have the desired effect: in the mid16th century, Protestantism grew stronger in the northern provinces of the Netherlands, while the southern provinces (now Belgium) remained predominantly Catholic.
The majority of the Dutch embraced Calvinism, which served as a unifying force in the struggle against Spanish Catholic rulers. Rebellion broke out in 1568, and the conflict lasted until 1648, when Spain, with the peace of Westphalia, renounced any claim to the Country.
The Netherlands became an independent Protestant nation but its Catholic roots remained.
There is a strong missionary movement within the Dutch Catholic Church: in the 20th century, around 15,000 missionaries left from the Netherlands. There are different organizations for the development, promotion, and funding of these activities within the Church.
After the Second Vatican Council, with its catechism, the Dutch Church proposed more open and liberal reforms. In the intense post-conciliatory period, Cardinal Bernard Jan Alfrink, Archbishop of Utrecht, published (with the support of many theologians, including the Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx) a new catechism, containing great openness on the issues of homosexuality, abortion, contraceptives, female priests, and priestly celibacy. For others, these positions - though not shared in any way - are a sign of a church that does not avoid certain issues, and is willing to talk about them.
Recently, the Dutch Supreme Court struck hard at the internal rules of the Calvinist Conservative Party, ruling that the prohibition of female candidates is illegal.
The Hague Court ruled that the oldest political party in the Netherlands must accept applications from women, otherwise they would be in violation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which was signed by the Netherlands.
The party has given no signs of rethinking their policy of subordination of women to men according to the strict dictates of the Bible. The party’s philosophy is: “We depend on God, and we will continue in our task of bringing the values of the Bible into the government and management of the Netherlands.”
The SGP also has the support of hundreds of female members in its battle: “It is right, in principle, that men should hold the leadership roles, even within the party. It is their job to lead the Netherlands, and it’s not clear why women should have a role.”
Is having the majority in the Senate worth a deal with the fundamentalists?