Title: Dutch Calvinism in modern America : a history of a conservative subculture /
Authors: Bratt, James D., 1949-
Publisher: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,
Year: 1984
Subjects: Reformed Church United States History.; Dutch United States Religion.; Calvinism United States History.
Abstract: In this scholarly yet entertaining book, James D. Bratt takes a look at the Dutch in America from the late 19th century to the present. A comprehensive study of an ethnic subculture, the book is in large part a study of the group's religious history as well, since, as Bratt points out, the contours of the Dutch presence in America have been overwhelmingly shaped by the church and its subsidiary organizations. / Although the book is extensively and scrupulously documented, Bratt has infused his scholarship with a considerable amount of anecdote that is by turns poignant and tragic and hilarious. / In Bratt's analysis of the fitful progress of Americanization that this close-knit religious community has undergone, we are treated to the sharp insights of a bemused and sometimes disaffected insider. Included is a chapter on novelists Arnold Mulder, David Cornel DeJong, Frederick Manfred, and Peter DeVries {u2014} four sons of the Dutch who fled the subculture only to reflect upon it almost obsessively from the outside. / Well written, scholarly, and highly readable, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America will have wide appeal among both academic and general readers.
Contents: The Netherlandic background. Secession and its tangents -- Abraham Kuyper and Neo-Calvinism -- Dutch, reformed, and Americans: definitions, 1900-1916. Varieties of reformed experience -- Reconnoitering America -- Politics: theory, taste, and trouble -- Wars without and within, 1917-1928. Dutch Americans and World War I -- Forming hte battle lines, 1919-1920 -- The resolution, 1921-1928 -- The consolidated community, 1928-1948. A religious fortress -- Calvinists in a darkening world -- Rebellion and refraction. Four renegade novelists -- At home and uneasy, 1948-1970s. Americanization again, 1948-1963 -- Evangelical and ethnic, 1964-1970s.