Barth in the News the Reception of Barthian Ideas Regarding Christian Political Parties in the Post-War Debates in Dutch Newspapers
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Barth in the news The Reception of Barthian Ideas Regarding Christian Political Parties in the Post-War Debates in Dutch Newspapers Master Thesis Christianity & Society Tilburg School of Catholic Theology Final version, 19 June 2018 Marius de Kok ANR: 983723 Supervisor: dr. K. Schelkens Non-supervising examiner: dr. H.J.M.J. Goris 2 Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 1. Sources and method ............................................................................................................................ 5 2. Barth’s political theology ..................................................................................................................... 8 2.1. Church and state in Barth’s theology ........................................................................................... 8 2.2. The relationship of Barth’s political theology with his life ......................................................... 10 2.3. The legitimacy of Christian political parties ............................................................................... 11 3. Karl Barth in Dutch newspapers ........................................................................................................ 13 3.1. The Dutch context: pillarisation and depillarisation .................................................................. 13 3.2. Barth’s ideas in Dutch newspapers ............................................................................................ 16 3.2.1. The ‘Doorbraak’ in newspapers, 1945-1961 ....................................................................... 16 3.2.2. A counter-discourse in the Reformed Liberated newspapers ............................................ 24 3.2.3. The decline of Dutch Barthianism, 1961-1989 .................................................................... 27 4. Conclusion: Barth in the newspaper ............................................................................................. 34 Literature ............................................................................................................................................... 36 Appendix. Selected newspaper articles ................................................................................................ 38 3 Introduction “Barth became a point of reference for the Netherlands. ‘Explain to me what you think of Barth, and I’ll tell you who you are’”,1 wrote H. Berkhof when the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) died in december 1968. This thesis is about Barth as a point of reference in the Netherlands. It examines how Barth’s ideas were received in the Dutch post-war context. The main attention is not given to academic and ecclesial interpretations and appreciations of Barth, but to theologians, journalists and in some cases common men referring to Barth in the day-to-day reading of the newspapers. The central question of this thesis is: What role did the ideas of Karl Barth about politics play in the popular debates in the Netherlands about the legitimacy of Christian political parties between 1945 and 1989 as it is reflected in Dutch newspapers? This question focuses not so much on Barthian thought in se, but rather on the reception of it. Through this lense three lines of thought can be developed. In the first place, political theology is taken into account, when is asked for the ideas of Barth about politics. This is, secondly, combined with reception history, when the question is aimed at tracking the role Barth’s political theology played in the Dutch context. The third perspective focuses on the development of the public sphere, when the question is asked what role Barth’s ideas played in popular debates, and in particular in newspapers. This research is limited in time to the post-war period, starting in 1945 and to the end of the Cold War in 1989, when the international field of politics changed rapidly. The question is answered by means of a critical study of newspaper articles from the selected period. Because of the digitisation of many newspapers in the online database Delpher, among which the most important of the post-war period, it is possible to select, using keywords, newspaper articles that deal with the debate about Christian political parties and that discuss Barth’s political theology. Those selected articles are critically analysed in the light of the context of the pillarised society. There is already a body of literature on the reception of Barth in the Netherlands.2 The most of it focuses on the pre-war period, and on the reception of Barth among theologians.3 This thesis deals with the post-war period and takes newspapers as its main primary source. The last is the most innovative aspect of this thesis, what is made possible by the digitalisation of these newspapers. Although the question about the legitimacy of Christian political parties is only a small part of Barth’s theology, it offers a topic that is on the one hand limited to the case, but says something about the whole of the reception of Barth. This is firstly the case 1 “Barth is een oriëntatiepunt voor Nederland geworden. ‘Zeg mij, wat gij van Bart vindt, en ik zal u zeggen wie gij zijt’”. H. Berkhof, ‘Karl Barth in Nederland’, Trouw (11 December 1968), 5. 2 The most important studies are Martien E. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth. Dynamiet of dynamo voor christelijk handelen (Baarn 1983); C.M. van Driel, Het volk zonder applaus. De receptie van Karl Barth in hervormd-gereformeerde en christelijk-gereformeerde kring (Barneveld 2014); Susanne Hennecke, Karl Barth in den Niederlanden. Teil 1: Theologische, kulturelle und politische Rezeptionen (1919-1960) (Göttingen 2014); Peter Kromdijk, Eenheid in verscheidenheid. Doorbraak in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk en de samenleving tijdens het interbellum (Hilversum 2017) and A.A. Spijkerboer, De nieuwe kern en Karl Barth (Kampen 1983). 3 An exception on both aspects is Van Driel, Het volk zonder applaus, but he limits his research to only a part of Dutch Protestantism; Hennecke’s study, Karl Barth in den Niederlanden ends in 1960, but a sequel is expected, considering the sub-title. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth, gives some broad sketches of the post-war period, but this is not of a systematic character. 4 because other main parts of his theology are linked to this topic. Secondly, more than in other countries was the debate about Barth’s legitimacy in the Netherlands focused on the legitimacy of Christian political parties, according to Brinkman.4 This was due to the specific societal constellation of the Netherlands, mostly referred to as the pillarised society. The main question is answered as follows. First, the methods and sources that are used to answer the main question are discussed. In the second chapter, Barth’s political theology is summarised. The main arguments for his rejection of Christian political parties are outlined. The third chapter presents the research findings about the reception of this political theology. First, the Dutch pillarised context is described, followed by the reception of Barth’s ideas in Dutch newspapers. This will lead to a conclusion in the final chapter, in which the broader relevance of this research is discussed. 4 Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth, 217. 5 1. Sources and method The main discipline to which this thesis adheres, is that of history, and more accurately put, of reception history. Hennecke, writing about the Dutch Barth-reception, asks eight leading questions: which themes are received (1), why these themes were chosen (2), how the context of the original sources was described (3), how Barth’s purpose was described for the own context (4), which new experiences were motivated by the texts (5), which new meanings were produced (6), which debates were held among Dutch theologians about the selected themes (7) and which debates were held with the author (8).5 Because this thesis already selected the theme of the debate (the legitimacy of Christian political parties), the first two questions are not applicable to this theme. The six remaining questions will be answered by a critical investigation of the way Barth’s ideas are used in Dutch newspapers with regard to the selected issue. To do so, a historical-critical reading of the primary sources is used. A critical reading of the newspaper articles is a reading in the light of two types of secondary sources: literature on Karl Barth and his political theology, and literature on the specific Dutch pillarised context. In the perspective of these two bodies of literature, it becomes clear what the specifics are of the reception of Barth’s political theology in Dutch newspapers. The assumption that lies behind the selection of newspapers as a source, is that they are part of the public sphere, in which ideas with a public interest are discussed. The public sphere is seen as a realm that is distinct from the private and the political sphere.6 Due to the mass digitisation of newspapers by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the online database Delpher,7 it is possible to search in a huge amount of newspaper articles.8 In this thesis, the database of Delpher is used to select the sources.9 Delpher contains more than 1,3 million newspapers, with circa eleven million newspaper pages, from 1618 to 1995, what means about fifteen percent of all Dutch newspapers ever.10 To search in this database, one can use some metafilters to narrow