chapter 10 The Netherlands: Shifting Secularities?
Hanna Lehtinen
The Dutch variation of the atheist bus campaign took place in March 2009. In the Netherlands, the advertisements with atheist slogans were not displayed on buses. Instead, the slogan “Er is waarschijnlijk geen god. Durf zelf te denken en geniet van het leven!”1 was displayed for two weeks on an outdoor commer- cial billboard, located by the busy A4 highway next to Schiphol international airport in Amsterdam. The initiative for an atheist campaign in the Netherlands came from Dr. Flo- ris van den Berg, an atheist and environmental activist, who at the time was the director of the Dutch humanist thinktank Centre for Inquiry Low Coun- tries (cfi). The campaign was organized by a team of four people and it was supported by three secular Humanist and freethinker organizations, namely the Centre for Inquiry Low Countries, Humanistisch Verbond, and the free- thinkers’ association De Vrije Gedachte. The spirit and motives behind the campaign were faithful to the original atheist bus campaign organized in the United Kingdom. However, the Dutch slogan came with a slightly different emphasis. Instead of “stop worrying,” the text on the billboard encouraged people to dare to think for themselves. This formulation refers to the Latin proverb sapere aude and to the philosophy of the Enlightenment.2 The goals of the Dutch atheist billboard campaign were, according to Van den Berg, to normalize atheism, to promote reason, and to offer a positive counter-message to religious organizations that often promote their cause in public spaces, including bus stops and train stations. The campaign was also meant to bring the privileges of religious institutions under critical scrutiny and public debate. The atheist ad campaign certainly was something new with its strong visual message displayed out in the open, and it did provoke some debate on the right and limits of promoting religion and nonreligion in the public sphere.
1 “There probably is no god. Dare to think for yourself and enjoy life!” Translated by author. 2 Floris Van den Berg, interview 2014. Van den Berg refers to Immanuel Kant and his way of using the proverb, which is usually translated “dare to know” or “dare to be wise.” Kant saw Enlightenment as a sort of self-liberation through reason.
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The campaign also fed into and blended with other ongoing discussions about the role and proper place of religion(s) and nonreligion in the Dutch society. This chapter maps the atheist bus campaign in the Netherlands from the perspective of multiple secularities. I make use of the analytical model devel- oped and applied to the Dutch context by Cora Schuh, Marian Burchardt and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. They suggest that a shift in the cultural content and understanding of secularity is occurring in the Netherlands,3 and my aim here is to show how the Dutch atheist ad campaign and the ensuing discussion can be seen as manifestations of this development. First, I will give a short introduction to religion and secularity in the Nether- lands as the context in which the atheist ad campaign was organized. Second, I will outline the campaign and the subsequent events. Finally, I will turn to examining both legal and social responses provoked by the campaign. Legal re- sponses include a parliamentary question, the bus company refusals to display the advertisement, and a complaint filed to the Advertising Code Commit- tee. In examining the social response I focus on the discussion in Dutch press media. In addition, I have included news articles from online news services and broadcasting companies such as Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (a Dutch public-service broadcaster) as well as my own short interview with Dr. Floris van den Berg. Because the campaign was not conducted as a bus campaign in the Netherlands, I will be referring to the Dutch campaign simply as the ‘athe- ist ad campaign’.
10.1 Religion and Secularity in the Netherlands
The Netherlands has long been a predominantly Christian country, with both Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. The Netherlands’ policy of re- ligious tolerance dates back to the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces (1568–1795). Even though Calvinism was granted a privileged position, a free- dom of conscience was also established. Consequently, the Dutch Republic at- tracted a multitude of religious minorities and dissenters. French Huguenots, Jews, Mennonites and other Protestant groups that were persecuted in their respective lands of origin, migrated to the country and laid the groundwork for the Netherlands to become a multi-religious society in the 19th century.4
3 Schuh, Cora, Burchard, Maria and Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika. “Contested Secularities: Religious Minorities and Secular Progressivism in the Netherlands.” Journal of Religion in Europe vol. 5, Issue no. 3 (2012) 349–383. 4 Knippenberg, 2005, 88–89, 91; Van der Veer, 2006, 533.