Holland's Post-Secular Future

...The others, the so-called "fringe Christians," are not attached to a particular church and are excluded from the official head count...

...Among the under-20s, the number has started to increase in recent years...

...The question, though, is whether Christianity is best placed to profit from this development...

...Any genuine seeker might stumble past it without knowing it was even there...

...In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation: "Throughout Western Europe, and also in Holland, liberal Protestantism is in its death throes...

...If the CBS figures are to be believed, in 2005 a small majority of the Dutch population (52 percent) still called itself Christian...

...Even the most optimistic estimates of Dutch Muslim organizations put the number of converts to Islam at no more than a few hundred a year...

...The doyen of the Dutch youth churches movement is Henk Jan Kamsteeg...

...But the fact is that we are here, and we're here to stay...

...An SCP estimate puts the number of Christian immigrants in Holland at around 700,000— and rising fast...

...Kamsteeg witnessed firsthand a phenomenon that, according to the old secularization thesis, was virtually unheard of: large numbers of young people deciding of their own free will to attend church services—and coming back for more...

...Even by the SCP's strict standards, Christians still form a 40 percent plurality among the wider population...

...He is already looking at buying and converting an old warehouse that would hold around 2,000...

...But, he added, "we never really have a pre-prepared plan for anything...

...state of eternal unbelief from which there is no return...

...It seems unlikely, then, that Dutch Islam will prove to be a serious long-term competitor with Christianity...

...Why should they have done so...

...In spite of this decline of the old religious establishment, however, the century-long wave of secularization seems to have crested, and may even have begun to recede...

...Alpha Netherlands coordinator Jan Bakker was quick to stress that there is no formal plan to develop such material...

...They may be successful, but a city upon a hill they are not—more like a city in wartime, its lights hidden behind thick dark curtains...

...If they do enter the public sphere, as in the case of the Alpha course, they do so under a neutered, de-Christianized guise: not imposing their views, merely inviting people to come along, have a meal, and ask any questions they like...

...From 42 percent of the population in 1958 and 17 percent today, membership could fall to as low as 10 percent before leveling off around 2020...

...They are long gone...

...A CBS survey noted that between 2003 and 2004, church attendance among under-20s rose seemingly inexplicably, from 9 percent to 14 percent...

...And through their building projects, they also show that God can still be a very visible presence in the community...

...The decline of liberal Protestantism has been matched by that of liberal Catholicism...

...With government sponsor-ship—and the accompanying demands of gender neutral-ity—of university-based imam training courses about to become a reality, the day is not far off when the first feminist and gay imams will start preaching in mosques in Holland...

...The answer to Westhuis's concerns came to him in the form of a book that has inspired the founding of most house churches in the Netherlands: German author Wolfgang Simson's Houses that Change the World (first published as Hauser, die Welt verandern in 1999...

...But in the past decade, Muslim immigration has been overtaken by a larger stream of immigrants, namely Christians from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe...

...We want a proper mosque," is how Fatih Dag explains the idea behind this project...

...Shortly after arriving from Suriname in the mid-1970s, Hofwijks became the pastor of a small Amsterdam-based charismatic Christian community of just under 40 members...

...On the night, 850 turned up—though nothing special had been done to advertise the event...

...They're part of another recent Christian phenomenon: the so-called youth churches, congregations of under-30s who gather in school buildings or sports halls to worship God, sometimes in rather unorthodox ways ("Skateboarding for Christ...

...As Hofwijks leans back in his chair, the building starts to shake to the sound of loudspeakers bellowing 100-deci-bel praises to the Almighty: "COME, NOW IS THE TIME TO WORSHIP...

...Hofwijks is not surprised by the explosive growth of his congregation: "If you look closely, you'll see that only the traditional churches are affected by secularization...

...In his living room in the old university town of Leiden, Kees Westhuis, 41, explains the essence of the house church idea: "We don't want to go to church, we want to be a church...

...Westhuis: "The idea is that you don't just share a meal once a week, you actually share your lives...

...What that seeker will find, and very visibly, is Islam...

...In the last few years, it even seems to be declining...

...Twelve-hundred people showing up, two services a night, you almost take it for granted...

...People are really searching for truth...

...There is no reason to assume Islam will be any better placed to deal with this liberal onslaught than mainstream Christianity was in the 1950s and '60s...

...Apathy is not yet a challenge in a community that defines Islam largely in cultural rather than religious terms...

...Since they don't seem to be interested in spreading the good news of Muhammad, the main priority of the Islamic communities in Holland will be to fight off the twin challenges of apathy and apostasy...

...According to government estimates, by 2020 this figure will have dwindled to a mere 2 percent...

...Hofwijks anticipates his congregation will eventually outgrow the building...

...More broadly, aging Catholic congregations mean that Roman Catholicism, too, will likely face another decade or so of declining membership...

...He is a member of the pastoral team ("Wow, that sounds old-fashioned...

...The success in the Netherlands of the so-called Alpha Course program—a sort of Christianity 101 for beginners—is another case in point...

...Inevitably, Christian evangelists will try to develop ways of communicating with the Islamic community with a view to converting its members...

...If an average Dutchman has any picture of Christianity, it is of empty pews and derelict church buildings...

...What is less clear is what is happening now and what happens next...

...In a way, these youth churches are the tip of another iceberg on the path of the SS Secularization...

...Christians may even profit from their encounter with Islam...

...Since its inception in 1997, 120,000 people have taken the Dutch version of the course...

...More than 100 companies participate...

...Amsterdam already counts around 170 immigrant church communities, and new ones are founded every month...

...The church building now belongs to Hofwijks's evangelical church, Mara-natha Ministries, which numbers some 1,800 members...

...The congregation met in a room in a local Dutch Reformed Church, which at the time still counted around a thousand members...

...If people want it, we'll have flags, loud music, people jumping up and down in the pews, even hip-hop...

...First of all, there's the undeniable fact of the continued decline and fall of the old liberal religious order...

...The latter has little to fear from a rival that refuses to proselytize and has yet to go through the refining fire of the struggle with religious liberalism...

...Hofwijks doesn't seem to mind: "Competition is good, it keeps you humble...

...Prison Alpha, Business Alpha, Student Alpha, Youth Alpha, and more recently the Alpha Marriage Course: Collectively, they seem to have struck a chord in Holland's secular society...

...instead more than 50 people showed up at each of the 12 regional meetings: "It's evidence of a growing spiritual hunger in society...

...According to Kamsteeg, if Christianity in Holland is to have a future, it has to develop a new way of doing things, possibly also in new locations: "Young people are genuinely interested in Christ...

...But in the long term, they won't work if they don't have the full force of the law behind them (as they do in most Islamic countries...

...Jan Bakker, national coordinator of Alpha Holland, admits he is as surprised as anyone about the success of the program: "There are still those who laugh at Christianity...

...Westhuis was raised in the Dutch Reformed tradition, but found himself increasingly frustrated with the worldly concerns of his local church: "During one meeting of the church elders, debate turned to the cost of refurbishing the church buildings...

...He'd expected small groups of maybe 10 people per meeting...

...The Word never changes...

...Muslims may not seek to convert, but unlike their Christian counterparts, they do speak confidently in public about their faith...

...When he announced the first service three years ago, he hired a hall that seated a maximum of 500 people...

...But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era—one we might call the age of "post-secularization...

...But deep down I still know how remarkable it really is...

...Why not call me an initiator, or a group leader...

...According to Bakas and Buwalda, God is back in Europe's most notoriously liberal country...

...The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here...

...The change is also starting to affect the attitudes of pupils at these schools...

...It seems an implausible hypothesis...

...Traditional approaches—honor killings and fatwas—have caused outrage among Holland's general public and political class...

...At Alpha Course Netherlands, they're already receiving requests for Alpha course material specifically aimed at an Islamic audience...

...The idea is that something that less resembles a traditional church might prove more welcoming to potential new believers...

...The reason the Christian population of Holland has stopped shrinking and is likely to avoid further decline is a phenomenon that until now has been largely overlooked by commentators on Dutch politics and society: Christian immigration...

...Worst hit are the mainstream Protestant churches, whose membership declined from 23 percent of the population in the late 1950s to 6 percent today...

...The reason is simple: While the message stays the same, the methods change to suit the times...

...Take the almost unnoticed reintroduction of crucifixes and other religious artifacts into the classrooms of Catholic schools throughout the country...

...I found myself wondering whether, instead of spending all this money on bricks and mortar, we wouldn't be better off spending it on evangelizing in the community...

...The Alpha formula, first developed at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, aims to provide small groups of interested people with an introduction to Christianity through a series of meals-with-dis-cussion evenings...

...And yet, Bakas and Buwalda claim, the Dutch are turning back...

...The Dutch house church movement, according to recent studies, has witnessed remarkable growth over the past decade or so: from a mere handful in the 1970s to just under 20 in 1990 to around 100 in 2000, and continuing upwards since then...

...He may well be right...

...Trade unions have even started lobbying the government for recognition of workers' right to prayer in the workplace...

...The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) finds that the number of self-described Christians stopped declining as early as the beginning of the 1990s...

...He says he understands local objections to the scale of the project: "Of course, if I were living in Turkey and people wanted a big new church next to my house, I might object too...

...The number of related courses is growing by around one hundred a year...

...Recent immigration reports suggest that for every new Muslim moving to Holland, there are at least two new Christian immigrants...

...One reason it won't is that Islam, at least in its Dutch variant, is not a proselytizing faith...

...By Joshua Livestro Amsterdam When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice...

...From both sets of figures, it seems clear that something of a high-water mark for secularization in Holland was set in the last decade...

...Much like the CBS statistic, the SCP's 40 percent figure hasn't changed since the early 1990s...

...Since the founding of the first Dutch youth churches in 2001, their numbers have risen significantly—from 45 churches serving around 10,000 young people in 2003 to 88 serving more than 20,000 in 2005...

...The once-powerful Catholic Eighth of May group—a liberation theology movement born out of a mass meeting on May 8, 1985, to protest against Pope John Paul Il's visit to the Netherlands—was disbanded in November 2003 because of lack of interest among its rapidly declining membership...

...Apart from being a herald of potential change from secular to post-secular society, youth churches are also an indicator of another significant development, namely the move away from the church of bricks and mortar to a less clearly recognizable, more informal setting...

...While Dutch Christianity is making the move from church buildings to living rooms, sports centers, and factory halls, Dutch Islam is moving in the opposite direction...

...Around 150 young people have gathered to spend their Friday evening in praise and prayer...

...at the Heartbeat youth church, founded three years ago in the medieval market town of Amersfoort, about 40 miles east of Amsterdam...

...They're just not into two-hour sermons, dreary music, and drafty old buildings...

...Years of gradual but seemingly unstoppable secularization have given way to a reaffir-mation of old religious identities...

...But once the third and fourth generations of offspring of the original immigrants start to replace the first generation, these cultural ties will start to lose some of their binding force...

...Holland's most prestigious literary prizes were awarded in 2005 to books dealing in a sympathetic way with Christian issues of faith and redemption...

...As expected, the survey prompted a skeptical response from social commentators...

...At the same time, it's far from clear that Dutch Islam will be able to keep religious liberalism at bay indefinitely...

...Henk Vink runs a website offering support and facilities to budding home churches...

...It will be replaced by a new orthodoxy...

...Dag is chairman of the board of the local Aya Sofia Mosque...

...There's statistical evidence to back up the "new orthodoxy" hypothesis...

...According to SCP predictions, that growth is set to continue to around 7.5 percent in 2020—a significant increase, to be sure, but nowhere near the apocalyptic figures predicted by those who fear Holland will become a majority Islamic country by the end of the 21st century...

...But there's a growing group, most of them young people, who are genuinely interested, for whom this is all completely new...

...If this is one direction He wants us to take, then we'll take it...

...After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime...

...The figures are disputed, however, by another major government research body, the Social and Cultural Planning Agency (SCP...

...Government ministries, universities, multinational companies like Philips, KLM, and ABN AMRO—all allow groups of employees to organize regular prayer meetings at their premises...

...The SCP uses a stricter definition of religiosity, allowing only those who not only describe themselves as Christians but also belong to a particular church to be counted as "real" Christians...

...Stanley Hofwijks...

...But Jesus remains the same as he was 2,000 years ago...

...We just wait to see where God wants us to move...

...Almost all nontraditional churches are growing, and growing strongly...

...They meet in churches like the one led by Rev...

...They're symbols of Dutch Islam's remarkable growth over the past 30 years, from less than 1 percent of the population in 1970 to 6 percent today...

...Indeed, in all major towns in Holland, building projects are under way for the construction of supersized mosques...

...That doesn't mean these intimidation tactics won't be effective in the short term—in a recent article in a Dutch political magazine about Islamic converts to Christianity, most sources would talk only on condition of anonymity...

...Analysts usually focus on the one million Muslim immigrants and their offspring who have made the Netherlands their home since the early 1950s...

...Siebelink's novel sold nearly 350,000 copies in its first year, making it the single bestselling Dutch-language book of the past decade—apart, that is, from a new Bible translation published in 2004, which sold more than half a million copies (in a population of 16 million people...

...Now, they volunteer to read poems or prayers, and the auditorium is packed...

...It also keeps you focused on what really matters: following God, being close to Him...

...In the meantime, Islam is already finding itself in a difficult position fighting off another threat, namely that of apostasy...

...It's the start of a youth service in the church's main hall...

...At the Kostverlorenvaart in the Amsterdam suburb of De Baarsjes, the foundations are being laid for a new mosque, with a 110-foot-high dome and 140-foot-high minarets...

...There's also the remarkable critical and commercial success of a number of openly Christian writers...

...He estimates that most of Holland's 200 cities now have at least one home church in them...

...For better or for worse, Dutch Christianity is now largely an underground phenomenon...

...The ultimate consequence of this approach is yet another new phenomenon: that of the house churches...

...The number of churchgoing Christians is still dropping among all other age groups, but among the under-20s it is rising again, and by a significant margin...

...The first time Vink realized something big was happening was when he organized a series of regional conferences for people interested in house churches...

...When asked about the importance of proselytizing, Dag volunteered that, on his list of priorities, trying to convert the indigenous Dutch population comes "just about last...

...Dutch Christians have increasingly withdrawn from the public sphere, either voluntarily—as in the case of the house churches and the youth church movement—or because they lack the confidence to speak publicly about their faith to an unbelieving audience...

...And we want a place to worship...

...His main challenge is not secularization but increased competition from other immigrant churches...

...I've long since ceased to be amazed about the amount of interest in youth churches," says Kamsteeg...

...With immigration from Islamic countries grinding to a halt and birth rates among the Muslim community further approximating average Dutch birthrates with each new generation, it seems unlikely to say the least that visions of a caliphate in Holland will come to pass in this century—or the next, for that matter...

...Cue forward to 2006, when prayer in the workplace is fast becoming a universally accepted phenomenon...

...In a recent newspaper interview, a head teacher at a Catholic secondary school in Rotterdam observed, "For years, pupils were embarrassed about attending Mass...

...Youth churches seem to meet anywhere but in traditional church buildings: cultural centers, sports halls, school assembly rooms, parking lots, even in night clubs...

...If40-50 percent of the population are Christian, yet only half of these are in traditional churches, Protestant or Catholic, what is going on with religion in Holland...

...At its core, the house church is based on the practice of the earliest Christian communities of the first century: small groups of people meeting in each other's houses, sharing a meal and worshipping God...

...It's a radical departure from modern life, which leaves most people feeling increasingly lonely...

...Lewis's term—a Joshua Livestro is a columnist for Holland's biggest selling newspaper, De Telegraaff and the Dutch edition of Reader's Digest...

...We don't want to pray in basements and school buildings anymore...

...The Libris Literatuur Prize went to the Catholic author Willem Jan Otten for his Specht en zoon (Specht and son) while the AKO Literature Prize was awarded to Calvinist Jan Siebelink's Knielen op een bed vio-len (Kneeling on a Bed of Violets...

...The church, which has a congregation of around 1,200, meets once a month in a Christian cultural center in one of the town's modern suburbs...

...Or rather: The Dutch are moving back to God...

...They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity...

...After all, Europe was supposed to have entered the realm of post-Christianity, to use C.S...

...Not from the SCP, however: In a recent report it basically confirmed the CBS's findings, observing that "it is noticeable that since 1997, the secularization curve among 16 to 30-year-olds has leveled off...

...If Dutch Christians want to learn again what it means not to hide your light under a bushel, they could do worse than look at their Islamic neighbors...

...It is perhaps also an attempt by this new movement to put distance between itself and mainstream churches who, in the eyes of many young Christians, represent the failure of the "old approach...

...The most appealing aspect of the house church, according to Westhuis, is its simplicity...

...That was then...