Gideon again:

This is important stuff, because as North Americans begin to pay more attention to Abraham Kuyper, the question will inevitably arise if there is a relationship between neocalvinism and the apparent dechristianization of the Netherlands today.

I believe there is a relationship, but only in the sense that one must have Christianity in the first place for dechristianization to occur at all. What happened in the Netherlands was by no means restricted to the Gerformeerde Kerken, but has also affected the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk and, perhaps even more dramatically, the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, the empty pew has been a more general phenomenon and has not been limited to a particular ecclesial communion. More significantly, it has not even been limited to the Netherlands.

Kuyper and other European Christians did their best to maintain the integrity of the faith and the community of faith against immense odds. But the church is by no means immune to trends in the larger culture, sad to say. How the smaller churches in the Netherlands, such as the Vrijgemaakt and the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken, fared I do not know. Again my colleague Harry Van Dyke would know this better than I.

One of the reasons I wrote my book is to alert Christians to the dangers of accepting too easily the various ideological visions that have plagued our society in recent centuries. This has implications for the health of church institutions, along with other communities.