I’m only 90 pages in but the read is fascinating.

1. The biggest change in the last 100 years in the CRC is the power to
   compel certain standards of behavior in churches. Married but not made
   profession of faith? Take the class or you’re out. Theater or Movie
   attendance? You’re “on the list”. Expression socialist views? Might be
   shown the door. Yet not a fan of unbridled capitalism either. Elders
   are making regular housecalls checking up on people. This doesn’t mean
   people liked it or people didn’t leave. People did leave. Overall, it
   seems, the churches did grow. Why was that in terms of motivation? I
   can’t say.

Where did many go? Many went RCA. I remember a story my uncle told of
a family where a young woman was pregnant out of wedlock so she
stopped attending church. When the elders came around her mom was at
the door “We joined the RCA…”

They weren’t really going RCA but she knew that would get the elders
to stop calling.

Now you can view this as you will but this was the CRC. Changes
happened over years and unevenly in different places but this was the
way. Discipline according to the standards of the leaders, and
different leaders and places had different standards on some different
things. It was uneven, but this was the church before the change.

2. De Jong’s bio shows first what Kuiper’s program as a local pastor.
   Catechesis for children and unmarried. Discipline for families.
   Doctrinal preaching. Warnings against worldliness. There are a lot of
   old CRC books floating around in used book sales. I ordered his book
   of 10 commandment sermons.

He also was big into liturgical reform and music. Everywhere he went
he focused on this.

Also always worked a lot on Synodical committees and local efforts at
other mission and Christian school work. He was a workaholic that
worked himself sick taking on way too many tasks nearly all the time.

3. The last church he served was Neland where he was point their
   pastor and the editor of the Banner. The Banner was the English
   language alternative to the Dutch magazine. You really get the sense
   that before WW1 the CRC was a Dutch church in language and ethos.
   English was a novelty and in many respects an accommodation even
   though increasingly by the 1920s (my grandparent’s generation) the
   youth were both here.

The size of the CRC when it was finally producing children in America
grew quickly biologically and through immigration up to WW1.

“The report of the publication committee to the 1944 synod noted that
in 1917 the magazine had 3,275 subscribers, 11,100 when Kuiper took
over in 1929, but now 31,000. Kuiper was now also handling between
sixty and eighty pieces of correspondence a week. The negative
criticism of several pet Kuiper projects was increasing, and staff
differences had intensified. The load was crushing. He was crumpling.”
p.89

The years between the wars brought dramatic change in the CRC. It was
growing, It was spreading out. Its institutions that would define it
for the 20th century were being formed.

4. The same interests that compelled Kuiper as a local pastor were
   brought to the denomination as a whole.

An early attempt to use Synodical power at uniform compelled liturgy
in the 1920s failed dramatically. They got the stuff pushed through
Synod but it unraveled as churches rebelled and protested. It was all
dismantled as mandates but much of it became practice over time as new
tools and publications were produced which provoked the intended
changes now voluntarily.

HJ Kuiper was a strange conservative. Although always warning against
Americanization his efforts to protect and guide the church brought it
into the 20th century in its own Dutch silo.

The overall patterns in the CRC was clear. Individual initiative
developed some mechanism which eventually was adopted by the
denomination. “Our boy” created “our thing”. Banner, Psalter Hymnal,
missions. These were all developed by individuals (lots of failures
too) and eventually the rest of the denomination took it over
institutionally.

1. Hymn singing by selecting and editing hymns out in the broader
   church brought into the church. Those old hymnals are still available
   online. Kuiper again started this.
2. The Banner replaced the Dutch magazine and Kuiper was editor for
   the middle part of the 20th century. Snapper is right. I’ve got to get
   my hands on the editorials. I’ve got copies of my Grandmother’s
   columns through some of those years but not Kuiper’s. My grandparents
   were a generation younger than Kuiper.
3. Christian Schools were start to take shape. Chicago and New Jersey
   by the 1920 already had schools up to High School but Grand Rapids was
   still depending on denomination wide support for what was the
   ministerial formation program that was comparable to high school,
   college and then theological school. Kuiper would be around for this
   effort to uncouple the high school from the denom. The rest would
   become CC and CTS.

This is as far as I am in the book. Fascinating reading.

A few observations.

Changes for conservatives are interesting. They HAD to respond to
demographic growth and the challenges the broader culture forced upon
them. The walls of discipline couldn’t stop movies, wars, affluence
and poverty. Challenges in urban areas (GR, Chicago, NJ) were
accentuated but many lived there before farming communities were poor
and in many ways second class. Pastors (even up until today) started
in farming communities and hoped to move to the cities if they moved
up the ministerial ladder.

In order to blunt the forces of modernity they used the tools of
modernity. For the mid 20th century that would be publication.
Eventually of course getting into radio. The CRC was not unique in
this, all religious efforts followed this track. The idea that “the
medium was the message” had not yet been spoken. So these were OUR
tools hopefully to be able to wield them to OUR ends.

Daniel Meeter is a must listen to in terms of a lot of this stuff. He
knows his stuff on the CRC and RCA. His grandmother was our next door
neighbor early years in Paterson. He knows both groups and sees the
differences, even if you’re not in agreement with him in terms of
“what’s best”. https://youtu.be/jDPIJTDChaM?si=bRwUmtGST_EQFXOF

The CRC worked to blunt “worldliness” though confessional and
behavioral discipline. These roots run deep. This is why again and
again the actions of Synods 2022 to 2024 are very much CRC in style
and again really harken back to the church of 100 years ago even
though that generation would find our generation degenerate in terms
of what even our conservative churches tolerate. Compared to them the
most ardent conservatives among us are pretty soft.

The RCA is playing a different game.

Now the RCA took a gamble during the 80s to 2020s by hoping they could
grew evangelistically through the seeker movement. Again, their
constitutional posture, as opposed to confessional meant that they
were able to enfold and work with more effectiveness than the CRC the
neo-evangelical and then seeker waves. Remember they are the closest
thing that Donald Trump has to a church. Norman Vincent Peele, Robert
Schuller. The CRC birthed Bill Hybels and the Southern Baptists Rick
Warren. The RCA took in A LOT of conservative evangelicals in their
constitutional way and for the part of them that were still Dutch that
was influential. The RCA was both more progressive and more
fundamentalist in some ways than the CRC. When the SSM pressure got to
high it could not overcome their constitution (listen to Meeter
emphasize this) and the evangelical growth left taking some of the
Dutch last names with them. The YRR influence in the RCA was MORE than
it is in the CRC. During the 2000s there was a wave of PCA imports
that became “City Classis” and in part due to City Church SF
liberalized on SSM. This horrified the RCA Classis Central CA group
(many with Dutch last names) that I worked with when De Vos gave money
to try to put the CRC and the RCA together. De Vos’ millions did
nothing to prevent what we are seeing now.

The RCA in California was a big deal since Schuller days but there
isn’t much of it left. City Church SF won their battle but depending
on how you view it it might be a pyrrhic victory. The 60k denomination
with HUGE legacy costs is now “joyful” and hoping to figure out how
they might be helped by some thousands of CRC members if they CRC
people can lay down their CRC ways. You may be able to keep your
theological zeal but we need to figure out the classical container and
no getting anxious about what others think or do underneath the big
denominational big top. Fascinating.

But the 2020s are not the 1920s in many respects. We are seeing
demographic decline not expansion. Christian schools are already
evangelical not exclusively for children of Dutch immigrants. Nobody
is starting magazines. Christian celebrities far beyond us are more
influential than any CRC leader could ever hope to become. Anxieties
stalk us about whether the middle of the 21st century will be way more
bloody, destructive and global than the 20th century was.

We do live in interesting times. pvk