Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, Protestant church in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition organized in the Netherlands in 1892 through a merger of the Christian Reformed Church and a group of Reformed churches that were followers of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), a Dutch theologian and statesman. In 2004 it merged with two other churches to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Protestantse Kerk in Nederland), which became the country’s largest Protestant church.
The Christian Reformed Church was organized by seceders who left the Netherlands Reformed Church (Nederlands Hervormde Kerk) in 1834 because of disagreements over church organization and religious orthodoxy. It adopted the name Christian Reformed Church in 1869 and generally held a strict interpretation of Reformed doctrine. Kuyper’s followers, who had increasingly disagreed with the theological liberalism of the Netherlands Reformed Church, left that organization in 1886.
After its creation in 1892, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands experienced growth and exerted national influence through political activities and its educational and publishing programs. In later decades, however, Reformed traditionalists reacted against some of Kuyper’s teachings on grace and the requirements for infant baptism, which they felt had strayed from Reformed doctrine. The eventual “binding,” by a synod (assembly), of church officers and members to acceptance of Kuyper’s views led to the secession or explusion of some churches, which founded the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Liberated), or Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (vrijgemaakt), in 1944.
In the 1960s the theology of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands became progressively more liberal, and in the 1980s it began negotiations on reunification with the Netherlands Reformed Church (Nederlands Hervormde Kerk). On May 1, 2004, the two churches merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Evangelische Lutherse Kerk) to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which claimed about 2.5 million members in the first decade of the 21st century.