A Dutch-American Connection

May-June 1997

By James W. Skillen

WASHINGTON, D.C.—There have been many connections between America and The Netherlands throughout our history The Puritans actually came to New England via Holland. The Dutch settled New Amsterdam (now New York). Leading figures with names like Roosevelt have shaped the American heritage down to the present day.

One of the Dutch-American connections most important to the Center for Public justice is the tradition of energetic Christian engagement in all areas of life, represented by Kuyper and his followers. This fact is reflected in our annual Kuyper Lecture and in the upcoming 100th anniversary conference announced on the preceding pages.

The Dutch-American connection that the Center enjoys is also reflected in various activities and publications originating in The Netherlands. In 1979, James Skillen and Rockne McCarthy were invited to represent the Center at a 100th anniversary celebration of Holland's oldest Christian political party, which had been founded by Kuyper. Last fall, Stanley Carlson-Thies participated in a conference at the Free University of Amsterdam (which Kuyper also founded) dealing with the Reformed (Protestant) tradition that crosses our borders.

The Free University has just published Sharing the Reformed Tradition: The Dutch-North American Exchange, 1846-1996, edited by George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, based on the 1996 conference. The chapter by Carlson-Thies is "The Meaning of Dutch Segmentation for Modem America." He concludes that "Dutch segmentation was the outcome of two processes: the division of society into subcultures defined by worldviews, and the pluralization of the state by incorporating into it the subcultures' own ways of carrying out public tasks."

The American experience has been quite different, Carlson-Thies explains.

Our history represents the tendency toward the privatization of different worldviews except for an American civil religion. Americans today need a new form of public pluralism. "Where citizens hold different convictions about how some public service should be carried out, the state should support all varieties of that service equally" Americans, in other words, can learn from the Dutch experience of seeking justice for different worldview communities. We can do that here not by trying to create segmentation of the Dutch variety but by seeking through public policies and legal reforms to make room for the expression of worldview differences in various arenas of public life such as education and welfare services.

Another connection valuable to the Center is the work of Christian research centers in Holland, such as those connected with two political parties: the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the Reformed Political Federation (RPF).

Last year, the research institute of the CDA published Dignity and Truth: Civil Society and European Cooperation, a volume quite relevant to current civil-society debates in the United States. Institutions and organizations such as family, church, school, media, and market comprise what is called civil society. The "state is one of the spheres of society with its own specific quality and purpose," say the authors. The state is "an institution with authority that has to establish the rule of law and good relations in society according to the principle of public justice."

While the state must always take its own purpose into account, it should "not be seen as wholly dissociated from civil society." The activities of non-governmental institutions have public dimensions. And people who function in the state and society have multiple roles. "The relations between the state and its 'members', the citizens, have their own quality, which differs from the relations between members within the family, within the church, within companies, within the nation. This specific quality of the state as a community, is determined by the existence of common political goals, based upon the rule of law and a positive will to a pluralist democracy, in which the dignity of the person and his or her ability to search for truth are of primary importance."

While the Center for Public justice benefits from its growing network of international contacts in other parts of Europe, and in North America, Africa, Australia, Latin America, and Asia, we are delighted to acknowledge the importance of this particular Dutch connection and look forward to future exchanges and cooperative ventures through conferences, publications, and other programs.