The Netherlands as an Experimental Garden of Religiosity

Abstract

The religious condition of The Netherlands is the result of an encounter between general processes of European change on the one hand—characterized by individualization, humanization and abstraction—and a historical process peculiar to The Netherlands on the other. Here, the general trend of secularization hides the development of a veritable garden of new and interesting religiosities. Church membership is falling, yet the number of religious groupings is growing. A large part of the population is still tied to traditional religion. Yet many in The Netherlands have a real interest in general religious questions and share through discussion and active practice in New Age orientations. The most astonishing development is that Dutch society, historically a society of minorities, has produced a majority religious orientation which is no longer part of the traditional ideological “pillars”, and that for the first time a nationally common morality is being sought out.