Tradition and Transformation
Theology in the ‘Christians for Socialism’ Movement in the Netherlands, 1974-1989
S.C.W. Beentjes U972678
Tilburg School of Catholic Theology Thesis MA Christianity and Society 15 ECTS Dr. K. Schelkens 30th October, 2019 Cover picture: Harbert Booij, Sketch showing Karl Barth with a red hat, Opstand 6, no. 1 (1979): 4.
1 Contents
Abstract 3
Introduction 4
Methodology 6
Historiography 9
1. Church and World: One Debate for Multiple Churches 12
2. Marching in Step with Marx 26
3. Babylonian Captivity in the Bourgeois Thought 34
4. Politics as Praxis 49
Conclusion 61
List of Abbreviations 65
Sources and Literature 66
2 Abstract
As a historical concept, ‘the long 1960s’ do not refer to the actual decade but rather embody a period of change. With regard to the churches, this change is often discussed in terms of ‘secularization’ and ‘deconfessionalization’. This has resulted in the image of protests in which students ‘exchanged God for Marx’. By looking at the Christians for Socialism-movement in the Netherlands, this thesis argues that the experience of Marxist- inspired protests did not only result in apostasy, but also affected theology. So, the storm of the students protests did not only rage outside the churches, but also inside the churches. Among these young Christians the preference for action over theory was transferred to theology, in which ‘praxis’ gained dominance over ‘doxis’. Thanks to this political operationalization of theology, young theologians cherishing very different theological traditions could work together in one movement.
3 Introduction
When the Christian newspaper Nederlands Daglad interviewed the Dutch professor in theology Rinse Reeling Brouwer on the occasion of his retirement, he was asked about his sympathy for the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the 1970s and 1980s. This was not the first time journalists demanded an explanation from a former member of the Dutch movement Christenen voor het Socialisme (Christians for Socialism; hereafter CfS) for their (supposed) support to oppressive regimes like the one in the GDR. Only three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, even before CfS ceased to exist in 1994, two journalists brought a series of interviews with Marxist-engaged theologians about the end of communism together in the book Een wereld zonder tegenspraak?. Between this publication in 1992 and the interview with Reeling Brouwer in 2019, articles with an identical angle appeared every now and then.1 This question whether and why Dutch Christians supported the communist regimes in Eastern Europe also found its way into the academic debate. The historian Beatrice de Graaf wrote a, both acclaimed and controversial, dissertation on the (Protestant) Churches, the peace movement and their relations to the GDR. She found that some Christians for Socialism, without knowing it themselves, functioned as informants for the Stasi. It made her label all political sympathizers of the ‘real existing socialism’ with GDR-loyal partners as ‘Christians for Socialism’. This might be understandable within the scope of her study, but is still an overgeneralization of the CfS-movement. The first CfS- members did not found the movement in 1974 to support the GDR, let alone to become a Stasi information-channel.2 De Graaf’s definition of the CfS as a GDR-instrument is a dominant factor in the historical image of the movement and therewith overshadows other historical aspects of the movement that might be interesting within Church history. One of these aspects is the inter-confessional character of the movement, as both Protestants and Catholics participated in the CfS-movement. Because of this mixed background of its members,
1 Job de Haan, Bert Rijpert, and Dick Boer, Een wereld zonder tegenspraak?: 'Linkse' theologen na de teloorgang van het socialisme (Baarn: Ten Have, 1992); Dick Schinkelshoek, "Portret Rinse Reeling Brouwer: Een moderne monnik," Nederlands Dagblad, June 22 2019; "'Complete nonsens over ons uitgestort'," Trouw, July 28 1997; Joke van Kampen, "God komt van buiten," De Groene Amsterdammer1994. 2 Beatrice de Graaf, Over de muur: De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken en de vredesbeweging (Amsterdam: Boom, 2004), 17; Lodwijk Dros and Cokky van Limpt, "Studie over Stasi en IKV roept verzet op," Trouw, December 8 2004; M. E. Monteiro, "Beatrice de Graaf, Over de muur. De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken en de vredesbeweging Amsterdam: Boom, 2004," Trajecta 15 (2006).
4 there was no common ‘CfS-theology’. The fact that the movement was inter-confessional also implied they had a broad international orientation. The horizon of CfS did not stop at the ‘real existing socialism’ in the GDR. There was also attention for Marxist movements in Latin America, as Catholics were more inclined to sympathize with these groups. In spite of the diverse religious backgrounds, all members of the CfS-movement were committed to the Marxist-Christian dialogue. This religious diversity on the one hand and shared political commitment on the other hand, provides an interesting case to study the processes of convergence and divergence in the rapidly changing Dutch religious landscape. In order to view the CfS-movement in this church historical context, this study moves away from the political perspective as employed by De Graaf and tries to develop a religious perspective on the CfS-movement. This religious perspective needs to be carried by a research question that has eye for both the (religious) diversity and (political) unity within the movement. This research question will be as follows:
How did the Christians for Socialism movement in the Netherlands operationalize the religious traditions in the different churches for political use?
In order to answer this question, this thesis will be divided in three chapters. The first chapter will look at the origins of the Christians for Socialism in the different churches in the period before its foundation in 1974, because the long 1960s are crucial to understand the Christian-Marxist dialogue in the 1970s and 1980s. The second chapter will look at the structure of the movement and the role of Marx in keeping the theologians from different backgrounds together. The third chapter will delve into the theological diversity in the CfS-movement that was the result of the inter-confessional origins. The fourth chapter will analyze the political activism of CfS in the light of this theological diversity. The historical scope of the second, third and fourth chapter will be the period between 1974 and 1989; the year in which the fall of the Berlin wall meant an important shift of paradigm for the Christian-Marxist dialogue. As already mentioned, I will approach these subtopics with a religious perspective. Before starting with the first chapter, I will therefore elaborate on this religious perspective in the methodology section and take a closer look at the added value of this religious perspective in the existing literature and historiography.
5 Methodology
As the CfS-movement continued to exist until 1994 and many of the main actors are still alive, the CfS movement undoubtedly belongs to the domain of Zeitgeschichte (contemporary history). After the Second World War, German historians started to treat Zeitgeschichte as a separate part of history. Zeitgeschichte as an historical interpretation of the recent past enabled German historians to study sensitive topics like the Nazi-regime or the DDR-regime.3 This makes Zeitgeschichte politically relevant too, for example when historical actors are still alive. Considering this background, it is not strange that many studies in Zeitgeschichte are concerned with political sensitivities surrounding oppressive regimes.4 However, this is not the only way to practice Zeitgeschichte and study the CfS. Within Zeitgeschichte, different historians can work on one research object with alternative conceptual or theoretical frameworks in order to show different aspects.5 The religious perspective in this thesis presents an alternative conceptual framework for the political perspective of De Graaf. This conceptual framework has to be developed in connection to the research question, so first the concepts of the research question have to be clear. As this research asks how religious traditions in the different churches were operationalized for political use, it is important to define the ‘religious traditions in the different churches’. If religion is concerned with the relation to the supernatural, religious traditions are the beliefs, practices and institutions that give forms to this relation to the supernatural. Churches are institutes carrying a religious tradition in both material (buildings, liturgy) and immaterial (theology, church structure) sense.6 Though most CfS-members could not identify completely with the churches from their youth, the religious traditions of these churches had shaped their Christian identity. The CfS-movement had a quite ambiguous relationship with the churches, as they saw it as their task to ‘represent a socialist point of view in the churches as a legitimate
3 S. Conrad, The Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany and Japan in the American Century, ed. E. Burke, III, K. Pomeranz, and P. Seed, The California World History Library (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 4 Cf. Graaf, Over de muur: De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken en de vredesbeweging. 5 M. Fulbrook, "Approaches to German Contemporary History since 1945: Politics and Paradigms," Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 1, no. 1 (2004). 6 Darren E. Sherkat, "Religiosity," in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), ed. James D. Wright (Oxford: Elsevier, 2015).
6 position’.7 To do this, they appropriated and interpreted the religious tradition to proof the legitimacy of their socialist interpretation. In the research question, this interpretation is called the ‘operationalization for political use’. To operationalize something, is to make it usable. In this case, usable in a political context. So, with its operationalization the Christians for Socialism wanted to make clear that a religious tradition had to advocate political action. They did not develop these political interpretations of religious traditions in strict isolation, but rather in the broad and dynamic religious landscape of that time. Because the research question should be approached within this religious context, a conceptual framework can help to make sense of this religious context and the research question in it. Three concepts provide angles to look at the research question within its religious context: religious renewal, confessional diversity and transnational transfer. The first concept that can clarify how religious traditions were operationalized in the CfS-movement is religious renewal. Beatrice de Graaf already mentions the search for new orientation points for Christianity as a background for the contacts between Dutch Protestants and Protestants in the GDR, but subsequently fails to analyze the Christians for Socialism against this background. This research takes up this missed opportunity. The 1960s are often seen as the decade of secularization, but it is also the decade of religious renewal. With regard to the popularity of Neomarxism among students in the 1960s, there is a common explanation that they (mainly Catholic students) exchanged God for Marx. However, this is hard to sustain in the case of the CfS-movement, where God and Marx were no exclusive categories. In the CfS-movement there was no rejection of God, but rather a reworked interpretation of God.8 When assessing the CfS-movement, it is also important to keep the confessional diversity in mind. Because the CfS-movement had roots in the different churches, there was no designated ‘CfS-theology’ or alliance to a specific church. The diversity that stems from this mixed roots of the Christians for Socialism, demands me to deal with several churches at the same time. By doing this, this thesis breaks with the dominant ‘pillarized’ perspective in the literature on religious history in the Netherlands.9 It proofs very
7 R. Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," (Woudschoten: Christenen voor het Socialisme, 1978), 3. 8 J. Kennedy, Nieuw Babylon in aanbouw: Nederland in de jaren zestig (Amsterdam: Boom, 1995), 169; Graaf, Over de muur: De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken en de vredesbeweging, 13. 9 The Pillarization-theory has been an important theory, identifying four ideological groups (Catholic, Protestant, Socialist and Neutral/Liberal) in the Netherlands living next to each other but not with each
7 fruitful, because it turns out that the interaction and dialogue between the people from different religious backgrounds was important. Not only to understand the CfS- movement, but also to understand the developments in Dutch Christianity at that time. The last concept that helps understanding the CfS-movement in its religious context is transnational transfer. Historiography on cultural change in the Netherlands in the long 1960s, and especially the Catholic Church in it, has been marked by a Sonderweg- interpretation. The cultural change of the 1960s could be attributed to specific characteristics of the (Catholic) elite in the Netherlands.10 Especially with regard to religion this prevalence of national explanations is dangerous, for religion is par excellence a border-transcending phenomenon (e.g. Second Vatican Council). This counts for the worldwide dialogue between Christianity and Marxism too. The concept of transnational transfer can therefore help to see how the Christians for Socialism took religious, cultural or political elements from abroad to apply in their own movement.11 Only when this conceptual framework is confronted with relevant primary sources, it will be possible to formulate a good answer to the research question. The limited size and limited time for this thesis made me decide to limit to publications as primary sources and do not use archives and interviews. The interpretation and analysis of these publications will be according to the classical historical method, which consists of source criticism. Sources that reflect public debate and therewith put the CfS- movement in its broader religious context ,will be most relevant for this research. Periodicals are excellent sources to gain insight in this public debate, because they show how groups related to each other. Of course, this is the case for the periodical of the CfS- movement Opstand. Other periodicals of progressive or socialist Christians like Wending, Tegenspraak and Eltheto will be useful as well, for example when analyzing the period before the foundation of CfS. Since this thesis is still developing a religious perspective on the CfS-movement, further research will have to determine the tenability of this religious perspective and its conclusions in confrontation with archival material or interviews.
other. Despite wide criticism on this theory, many historians still take one of the pillars as perspective. This thesis chooses to stay away from the Pillarization terminology and discussion. For further reading, see: Peter van Dam, Staat van verzuiling: Over een Nederlandse mythe (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2011). 10 Kennedy, Nieuw Babylon in aanbouw: Nederland in de jaren zestig; Maarten van den Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2012); N. Pas, "De problematische internationalisering van de Nederlandse jaren zestig," BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 124, no. 4 (2009). 11 Caspar Dullemond, Barbara Henkes, and James C. Kennedy, "Maar we wisten ons door de Heer geroepen": Kerk en apartheid in transnationaal perspectief (Hilversum: Verloren, 2017), 9-13.
8 Historiography
As a movement of leftist young people in the 1970s, the CfS-movement was anything but unique. Because there were many more groups who shared the Neo-Marxist commitment and were equally activist, the CfS-movement easily fits into the historiography on the long sixties or its emblematic year 1968. Viewed from that perspective, the CfS-movement was just another typical example of the broader phenomenon of Neo-Marxism in the socio- cultural (r)evolution in the long 1960s.12 This typical approach has already been illustrated by two master’s theses on the Dutch CfS-movement, which were strongly affected by ‘social movement-theories’.13 These sociological theories tried to find general explanations for the activism in the long 1960s. The embedment of the CfS-movement in a more general history of activism in the 1960s is not peculiar for the Dutch case. In other countries, the local CfS-movements are often studied within the framework of political activism and Neo-Marxism too.14 Yet, the assessment of the CfS-movement within Church history will give different results. Though other progressive Christian movements arose at the same time as the CfS- movement, these were often less explicit in their Neo-Marxist adherence. It its nothing said too much that the CfS-movement with its activism and its blend of Neo-Marxism and
12 See e.g. G.R. Horn, The spirit of '68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956-1976, spirit of sixty-eight (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007); The Spirit of Vatican II: Western European Left Catholicism in the Long Sixties, 1959-1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 13 K. van der Bruggen, "De internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland" (Doctoraalscriptie, Katholieke Unviversiteit Nijmegen, 1977); K.J. Baas, "Hun god was links: Een historische analyse van de Nederlandse afdeling van de beweging 'Christenen voor het socialisme' (1974-1994) als Nieuwe sociale beweging" (Doctoraalscriptie, Eramsus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2002). There are several studies dealing with the Dutch Christians for Socialism which have a more theological focus, but they are small-sized; T. Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," in Contrapunten: Tussen radicaal christendom, restauratie en pluralisering: Hedendaagse beschouwingen over het katholicisme, ed. Urs Altermatt, Marit Monteiro, and Theo Salemink (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2010); W. Beekers, "Contra de verzoening de bevrijding; de verlossingsidee van de Nederlandse beweging Christenen voor het Socialisme in historisch perspectief," in Strijd om de ziel; christendom en communisme in de twintigste eeuw ed. G. Harinck (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2007). 14 Though most of these studies touch briefly upon theological developments, the emphasis is on political activism in: D. Saresella, "I Cristiani per il socialismo in Italia," Studi Storici 59, no. 2 (2018); G. Milanesi, "Religious Identinty and Political Commitment in the "Christians for Socialism" Movement in Italy," Social Compass: International Review of Sociology of Religion 23, no. 2-3 (1976); T. Steinenga and K. Coleman, "Protestant Political Orientations and the Structure of Political Opportunity: Chile 1972-1991," Polity 27, no. 3 (1995); David Fernández Fernández, "Oral History of the Chilean Movement ‘Christians for Socialism’, 1971–73," Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 2 (1999). There are two important exceptions, which have more attention for theology: Bart Latré , Strijd & inkeer: De kerk- en maatschappijkritische beweging in Vlaanderen, 1958-1990 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2011); G. Baum, ""Politisés chrétiens": A Christian-Marxist Network in Quebec, 1974-1982," in The Church in Quebec, ed. G. Baum (Ottawa: Novalis, 1991).
9 Christian theology reinforced the Christian-Marxist dialogue with new spirit. However, this new spirit was less successful in its procreation. In his study on Flemish progressive Christian movements, the historian Bart Latré noticed that these progressive Christian movements with roots in the long 1960s had difficulties with reaching younger people. In the Dutch CfS-movement in the 1980s, there were also concerns about the absence of new members resulting in an ageing of the movement.15 Due to the lack of successors after the dissolution of the Dutch CfS-movement in 1994, this experiment of linking Marxism and Christianity within an inter-confessional movement turns out to be rather unique in the history of church and theology. The concept ‘generation’ might prove useful to take both the typicality of the CfS- movement in the long 1960s and the uniqueness of the CfS-movement in Church history into account.16 Due to the decreasing popularity of the movement among the youth in the 1980s, it was difficult for theologians in the CfS-movement to pass on their theological legacy to younger generations of theologians. Though this might give the impression of the CfS-movement as a dead end, this still does not mean the CfS-movement should be treated as an irrelevant side road in Church history. In the CfS-movement, the theological itinerary of a leftist-engaged generation of theologians becomes visible. With their critical stances, this generation of theologians had a distinctive voice in the debates in the churches of the 1970s and 1980s and elicited strong reactions from conservative forces.17 The significance of leftist-engaged theologians in conflicts in the Dutch churches in the 1970s and 1980s, requires that Church historians take groups like the CfS-movement seriously when discussing these conflicts; not only as groups of (political) activists in the church, but also as theologians. With a research question that reconstructs the link
15 Latré , Strijd & inkeer: De kerk- en maatschappijkritische beweging in Vlaanderen, 1958-1990, 433-36; P. van der Ploeg, "De kerk uit," Opstand 11, no. 1 (1984): 15. 16 For ‘generation’ as a historical concept, see: Hans Righart and Paul Luykx, "'Invented generations'?: Historici over het generatievraagstuk," in Generatiemix: Leeftijdsgroepen en cultuur, ed. Hans Righart and Paul Luykx (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1998). According to Righart and Luykx, there was some sort of ‘sense of generational coherence’ among people born between 1940 and 1955. Among the students in this generation, there were still quite many who decided to study theology. For statistical information on the student developments in the field of theology, see: Th. Schepens, "Studenten en afgestudeerden aan theologische faculteiten en universiteiten in Nederland: Een statistisch overzicht, 1977-1987," Jaarboek van het Katholiek Documentatie Centrum 19 (1989). Though the scope of this study falls mainly beyond the period in which the generation of my focus studied, deduction might give an indication on some earlier development. For example, the increasing share of laypeople and women in the study of theology. 17 M. Derks, "Een andere tijdgeest: Conservatieven, ‘normaal-katholieken’ en het dominante beeld van vernieuwing in postconciliair Nederland (1962-1985)," in Achter de zuilen. Op zoek naar religie in naoorlogs Nederland, ed. Peter van Dam, J. Kennedy, and Friso Wielinga (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); J. van der Graaf, Het Getuigenis: Motief en effect (Kampen: Kok, 1973).
10 between theology and politics in the movement, I can contribute to this. Nevertheless, it can still be difficult for Church historians to accept the CfS-movement as Church history because a large share of CfS-members kept proper distance from the churches. This thesis will address to this problem by clarifying that there was less distance between the CfS- movement and the theological tradition of these churches. Therefore, it can be helpful to distinguish between the history of the Roman-Catholic Church and the history of Catholic theology or between the history of the Dutch-Reformed Church and the history of Reformed theology. The CfS-movement identified more with the theology of the respective churches than with the institutional churches itself.18 With its focus on both theology and (political) activism of leftist religious groups in the long 1960s and afterwards, this thesis is largely indebted to recent scholars on ‘left Catholicism’.19 However, the CfS as research topic challenges me to move away from a purely Catholic focus. With the help of the earlier mentioned conceptual framework, I will demonstrate that the CfS-movement was strongly receptive to developments in global Christianity, regardless religious or national borders. By discerning these encounters between the different religious traditions within the CfS-movement, I will hopefully create a historical account of the movement that is less one-dimensional political. Only then, this study on the Christians for Socialism can depict the theological legacy of a church-critical generation of theologians that risks to be forgotten in Church history.
18 An interesting quote in this respect is to be found in, H.D. van Hoogstraten, "Transformatie van de theologie," Eltheto 69 (1983): 44.: ‘The traditional intellectuals are bound to the tradition (I consider this more essential than their boundedness to the institute church which rapidly loses importance).’ 19 Horn, The Spirit of Vatican II: Western European Left Catholicism in the Long Sixties, 1959-1980; "European Left Catholicism in the Long Sixties: Fact or Fiction?," Histoire@Politique 30, no. 3 (2016); M. Monteiro, "The Religious Radicals of ’68," Religion & Theology 24, no. 1-2 (2017); Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig."
11
1. Church and World: One Debate for Multiple Churches
In the 1960s, the Dutch protestant newspaper Trouw reported comprehensively on the developments in the Roman Catholic Church. This could give the Protestants readers of Trouw an insight in the processes that took place in the Church of their fellow Dutch citizens. However, commentators like the Reformed theologian Harry Kuitert also used examples from the Catholic Church to point at the shortcomings in the Protestant churches.20 Protestant supporters of renewal were keen to see something like an ‘interchurch renewal movement’ in the changes in the Catholic Church.21 It is interesting to see what created this sense of belonging to the same movement among progressive Christians from different dominations. Though progressive Christians in the different churches shared their experience of challenging the status quo, each church still had its particular context and problems. Nonetheless, progressive Catholics and Protestants had much in common. The questions they had with regard to the position of the Church in the world, more precisely modern society, were the same.22 Besides, there was consensus about the best way to speak about these questions: in dialogue.23 This chapter analyzes how the turn to dialogue in the churches created an environment in which experimental ideas about the role of the church in the world emerged.
Dialogue and Democracy
When the Second Vatican Council started in 1962, millions of people could follow it. Developments in mass media had made it possible to broadcast the event to people all over the world.24 As a point of reference, Vatican II set standards for churches who wanted to evoke a dialogue inside and outside their church. Through this, Vatican II directly or indirectly inspired many church-related events in the following decade. In the Netherlands, this was most explicitly the case with the national Pastoral Council of
20 H. Biersteker, "Concilie: Verkwikkend bad in Noordwijkerhout," Trouw, April 14 1969; H. Kuitert, "Niet voor hervormden alleen: 'Klare wijn': soort hogere catechisatie over bijbel," Trouw, March 22 1967. 21 P. Hagen, "De Kerk een struikelblok," Trouw, July 13 1968; "Nieuw model," Trouw, April 15 1969; "Fatima," Trouw, May 26 1967. 22 H. Kuitert, "Vreemde Verleiding," Trouw, January 18 1969. 23 K. Schelkens, J.A. Dick, and J. Mettepenningen, Aggiornamento?: Catholicism from Gregory XVI to Benedict XVI (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 155-59. 24 Aggiornamento?: Catholicism from Gregory XVI to Benedict XVI, 134-35.
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Noordwijkerhout, which in turn inspired the Nederland Hevormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church; DRC) to organize a General Church Meeting (GCM) in 1970. However, this GCM was also strongly influenced by the 1968 Assembly of the World Council of Churches.25 Overlooking all these events with an emphasis on dialogue in both Catholic and Protestant churches, the question arises why these churches felt they should facilitate dialogues in the long 1960s? The announcement of a Second Vatican Council in 1959 by Pope John XXIII came as a real surprise for almost everyone in the world. People did not expect John XXIII to change the Church radically, when he became Pope in 1959 at the age of 76. Nonetheless, he called Catholic bishops from all over the world together to talk about the Church. In his opening address, John XXIII elaborated on his expectations of the Council by using the term aggiornamento. This aggiornamento had to bring the old doctrines and traditions of the Church more in harmony with modern needs. To reach this, the Catholic Church had to be more open towards new theology or the religious other, and lay down its old condemnatory tone. In the preparations of the Council, openness played an important role as well. Instead of prescribing an agenda, the organizing commission invited all participants to write down which topics they desired to discuss at the Council. In that way, the Council could respond to the worldwide challenges for the Catholic Church.26 This sudden openness of the Catholic Church was also stunning for non-Catholics, who thought of the Catholic Church as a closed and paternalistic bulwark. Especially in the Netherlands, this was the persisting image of Catholicism among non-Catholics until the Vatican II. Still in 1954, the episcopate had published a so-called Mandement about the role of the Catholic in public life. The bishops condemned socialism, liberalism and humanism. They even sanctioned the participation of Catholics in socialist organizations with refusal of the sacraments. Dutch non-Catholics, who dreamed of a more open society in which the Catholic could fully participate, saw their prejudices about the hierarchical and isolated Catholic Church confirmed.27 At that time, they would not expect the Catholic Church to become a breeding ground for renewal and openness. However, ten years later,
25 Mady A. Thüng, "De algemene kerkvergadering: Blikseminslag of bliksemafleider," Wending 25 (1970): 221. 26 Schelkens, Dick, and Mettepenningen, Aggiornamento?: Catholicism from Gregory XVI to Benedict XVI, 127- 37. 27 G. de Ru and F. H. Landsman, Onze verhouding tot de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk: Heroriëntering en Appèl (Den Haag: Boekencentrum, 1969), 53-60.
13 they found the Catholic Church at their side. This also affected the perception of the Catholic Church in ecumenical circles. Whereas the Catholic Church tended to be the most notable absentee in the post- war ecumenical initiatives, Vatican II seemed to create new possibilities to involve Catholics in ecumenical circles.28 For Protestant leaders in the Netherlands who were disappointed by both the lack progress of the ecumenism in the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the absence of the Catholic Church, this was an interesting development. In 1961, there had been an Assembly of the WCC, but in the eyes of the Protestant theologian J.C. Hoekendijk the results had been disappointing. He complained there were no signs of hope for greater unity in the reports of the Assembly:
‘On decisive points we are encouraged to continue to study (as if it can come from that!) and where no agreement can be reached, one goes back to the level-of- comparing-of-positions (a method, that – after Lund 1952 – should be taboo).’29
However, when the Protestant theologian H. Berkhof reported about the first meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC after New Delhi, he sounded much more positive than Hoekendijk. This meeting took place in August 1962, only a few month before the Vatican II would start. The expectations of the Council already had their impact on the discussions:
‘Once in a while everybody experiences that a certain word or expression, used by somebody in a meeting or conference, is eagerly adopted by many and in a short time functions as a key word for pending issues. (…) The magic word there (ed. Meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC) was ‘dialogue’. It started with the annual report of Visser ‘t Hooft. (…) Probably he thought of the word of Congar, that the R.C. Church with the Secretariat for Christian Unity steps ‘into a dialogical situation’ in relation to the other churches.’30
28 The encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928) had blocked the cooperation of Catholics with ecumenical initiatives, see: Jan Jacobs, Nieuwe visies op een oud visioen: Een portret van de Sint Willibrord Vereniging, 1948-1998 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 1998). 29 J.C.H., "Na New Delhi," Wending 17 (1962): 67. 30 H. Berkhof, "De Wereldraad voor nieuwe dialogen," Wending 17 (1962): 562.
14 The word ‘dialogue’ was already in use as a more apologetic-aimed concept to discuss the relations between churches, but it received new impetus in the early 1960s. Both in the WCC and at Vatican II many hoped that the results of the Catholic ‘aggiornamento’ would be supportive to the ecumenical dialogue between Rome and Reformation.31 However, ecumenism was not the only angle in which progressive Protestants and Catholics saw possibilities for dialogue. Progressive Protestants and Catholics also found each other in their will to enter into dialogue with the secular world. For them, this dialogue with the secular world implied a severe adaptation to modern times for every church. The dialogue with the secular world became an important agenda point for the three biggest churches in the Netherlands: the Roman-Catholic Church, the Dutch- Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. The effects of secularization and modernization on religion in the Western world were clearly demonstrated by books like Honest to God (1963) or The Secular City (1965), written by respectively the Anglican bishop John Robinson and Protestant theologian Harvey Cox. Their secular theology evoked big debates among the Catholic and Protestant intelligentsia. It made clear that all churches in the Netherlands had to face the same challenges.32 The idea that the churches had to react on the secularization by entering into dialogue with the secular world became a moving force in the progressive parts of Dutch Christianity. A group of eighteen pioneers from the two biggest Protestant churches in the Netherlands, the earlier-mentioned DRC and the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (Reformed Churches in the Netherlands; RCN), came up with an initiative for fusion of both churches. All eighteen were either student- or evangelization-ministers, who had a missionary focus and were very much involved in the dialogue with the secular world.33 This was also visible in their argument for fusion: ‘the conversation with “the world” and the conversation with Rome too, will make us experience that we are confronted with the same questions and will travel the same roads’.34
31 "De Wereldraad voor nieuwe dialogen," 16; L.G.M. Alting von Geusau, "De katholieke kerk maakt kennis met zichzelf," Wending 17 (1963); "De Rooms-Kahotlieke Kerk in staat van dialoog," Wending 19 (1964); D. van Keulen, "G.C. Berkouwer and the Council," Trajecta 22, no. 1 (2013): 16. 32 In the magazine Wending, the books of Robinson and Cox gave rise to a series of articles to which both Catholics and Protestants contributed. For these series of articles on ‘Honest to God’ and ‘The Secular City’, see volume 18 and 23. 33 Hanna Ploeg-Bouwman, Bewoonde herinnering: Een learning history van het Samen-op-Weg proces (Utrecht: Eburon, 2019), 124. 34 De Achttien, Nieuw land (Amsterdam: Ten Have, 1965), 8.
15
Now the churches got into a dialogical situation, conversation partners were supposed to take each other serious. This was also the case for the dialogue of the churches with the world. In particular, progressive Catholics and Protestants thought the churches had to learn from the secular world to re-orientate in society. This could keep the churches up to date.35 In the Catholic Church, this became very clear. Fueled by the Vatican II, the Dutch episcopate took up the dialogue with the secular world and the subsequent modernization of the Church very proactively. They decided to organize a ‘Pastoral Council of the Dutch Church Province’ to speak about the translation and application of the conciliar documents for application in the local context.36 In the Pastoral Council, Dutch Catholics showed they were able to learn from modernity. This started already in the first plenary session of the Pastoral Council when the ‘crisis of authority’ in the Catholic Church was discussed. The study commission that had written a report in preparation of the session, the report-Loeff, linked this crisis of authority to the changed nature of modern man:
‘The process of democratization brought the modern man to a grade of emancipation in which it no longer accepts decisions about him, without him. The democratic principle is no longer merely a principle of political structure, but a way of thinking that pervades the whole life in all its facets (…). Whether authority can maintain itself or not depends to a large extent on the question if it can be accepted as an exponent of the community.’37
According to the report Loeff, the crisis of authority could only be tackled when the forms of authority in the Catholic Church fully recognized these values of modern men. Through the dialogue between Church and world, ideas about democratization of the church could enter the Pastoral Council. The willingness to bring democratization in the Church was also strongly related to the shift of paradigm in Catholic theology at the Vatican II. Under influence of the historical-contextual analyses of ‘nouvelle théologie’, the study
35 Nieuw land, 131-34; Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, 160-61. 36 Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, 161. 37 Walter Goddijn, Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving (Amersfoort: Katholiek Archief, 1969), 8.
16 commission acknowledged that the forms of authority in the Church were based on historical structures of society and therefore no essential attributes of the Church.38 Whereas authority and uniformity were traditionally two important features of Catholicism, the report-Loeff promoted non-coercive testifying of the bishops in a pluralist Church. In the ‘open system’ they endorsed there would be space for the deviating views of the ‘weeds’, ‘bad fishes’, ‘dry wood’ and even ‘heretics’.39 In the first plenary session about authority, the challenging statements of the report-Loeff gave rise to a vivid debate. After two days of discussion, eleven motions were adopted by the plenary session. The key words in these motions were decentralization, participation and consultation. Controversial concepts like democratization and pluralism did not make it to the accepted motions.40 This did not mean that these concepts were absent in the Pastoral Council. Ironically enough, many would see the operation of the Pastoral Council itself as the example of democratization and pluralism within the Church. Participants and Catholic media had the feeling they were part of a revolutionary event in the history of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. There was no precedent in canon law on which the legal model of the Pastoral Council could be based. Therefore the Pastoral Council had a rather experimental character. In its ‘working formula’ the episcopate had decided to install a plenary assembly consisting of the bishops, the central committee and changing representatives (clergy and laity) of the dioceses. In the plenary sessions of the Pastoral Council, this plenary assembly could speak and vote about the reports and motions.41 Cardinal Alfrink wanted to temper some of the high expectations, by warning in his sermon at the opening mass not to see the Council as a ‘parliament that takes decisions which have to be executed by the bishops’.42 Nevertheless, precisely this was what many progressive Catholics and by extension progressive Protestants perceived in the Council: a parliament.
38 Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving, 80; Schelkens, Dick, and Mettepenningen, Aggiornamento?: Catholicism from Gregory XVI to Benedict XVI, 139. 39 Goddijn, Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving, 21. 40 Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving, 119-23. 41 Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, 163; Goddijn, Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving, 90-91; J. Roes, "Het Pastoraal Concilie: Een experiment in kerkvernieuwing en kerkvinding," in Katholiek Nederland na 1945, ed. Ph C. Stouthard and G. van Tillo (Baarn: Ambo, 1985), 29-31. 42 Goddijn, Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 2 Eerste plenaire vergadering: Gezagsopvatting en gezagsbeleving, 94.
17
Progressive Protestants interpreted the aggiornamento and renewal in the Catholic Church as a command for their own churches, as they felt their churches lagged behind. This was also the case with the Pastoral Council, in which progressive Protestants saw a process of democratization. They asked when this process of democratization would reach the Protestant churches.43 These calls had their effect, when the DRC announced General Church Meeting (GCM) for 1970. Protestants churches like the DRC already had a tradition of synods and church meetings, but only ministers and theologians could participate at these occasions. Therefore, the ‘regular church people’ deserved the chance to express themselves in the GCM as well.44 In the conference hall of the GCM hang a protest banner: ‘GCM. Sop to the church democracy’.45 The ‘democratic’ initiatives like the Pastoral Council and the GCM enabled the youth to let their voices of protest hear.
Protest-generation in the Churches
The rebellious behavior of young people at the GCM, can be regarded as typical for the youth in the long 1960s. Nonetheless, this GCM is under-served chapter in Dutch historiography in comparison to the Pastoral Council. This is mainly because GCM was quite a marginal event in the history of the Protestant churches in the Netherlands, whereas the Pastoral Council was the starting point of a lengthy conflict of the Dutch church province with Rome.46 However, it is unsatisfying to view the Pastoral Council and GCM only within respectively Catholic and Protestant context, for it is clear that they related to each other. When we take the GCM and Pastoral Council together, the presence of the youth at these events catches the eye. In both cases, the youth was very critical on the churches and had a radical view on the role of the Church in society. The protests of the so-called ‘protest-generation’ (people who were born between 1940 and 1955) could not only be heard outside, but also inside the churches.47
43 A. Dronkers, jr. and G. Prast, "Amsterdam journaal," Wending 23 (1968); A.J. Klei, "Van onder op," Trouw, January 18 1969; "Nieuw model."; "Uit de kerkbladen: Kloosterzustertjes en de voorlopige VPRO," Trouw, April 23 1968. 44 Klei, "Van onder op."; "Ga je mee naar de algemene kerkvergadering?," Trouw, October 9 1969. 45 T.J. de Looy, Ik kon gisteravond niet slapen en nu nog niet: Verslag AKV'70 (Den Haag: Boekencentrum, 1970), 9. 46 Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, 189-91. 47 In its academic use, the definition of ‘protest-generation’ was worked out by: Hans Righart, De eindeloze jaren zestig: Geschiedenis van een generatieconflict (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1995).
18
For the youth, boundaries between the churches were less absolute than for their parents. In 1962, the Protestant theologian Hoekendijk wrote an article in which he called to hurry the progress of ecumenism. According to him, the ‘post-ecumenical’ generation lived with a ‘broad horizon’ and could not breathe in the ‘denominational houses’. The post-ecumenical generation therefore would take their own decisions and go their own ways.48 This was discernable at the universities, where the amount of students rose from 42.000 to 103.000 between 1960 and 1970.49 In almost every university city in the Netherlands, local committees organized ecumenical chapel services without cooperation of big churches like the Catholic Church and the RCN. Still, Catholics and RCN-members attended the services.50 Students from different religious backgrounds found each other in a common political and countercultural engagement. Originally, Catholic and Protestant students had their own student movements: the Union for Catholic Students (UKSN), the Dutch Christian-Student Association (NCSV) and S.S.R. (resp. Catholic, general-Protestant and RCN-Protestant). However, the relevance of this own confessional identity decreased in the 1960s. In 1967, the UKSN, NCSV and S.S.R. stopped their own magazines and started a magazine together: Off-. In the first introduction of the new magazine, the editor-in-chief wrote that the fusion of the earlier magazines was possible because all student movements had ‘confrontation with the Gospel’ as principle.51 When the students discussed Christianity in their inter-confessional magazine, it often dealt with the presence of the church in the world. These ideas could be wild. For example, a Protestant student and active GCM-participant, Theo de Looy, wrote in Off- that the churches had to speak out in favor of the use of the psychedelic drug LSD.52 However, more frequent than these cultural articles, were the articles about the political situation in the world. In their quest for a true Christian presence in the word, the students in Off- entailed an explicitly leftist and progressive discourse. In hot topics like the Vietnam War and the 1968-protests, Off- radically spoke out against the establishment.53
48 J.C.H., "Na New Delhi," 68. 49 A.J. vand en Berg, De Nederlandse Christen-Studenten Vereniging, 1896-1985 (Den Haag: Boekencentrum, 1991), 191. 50 L.A. Hoedemaker and P. Tijmes, "Problemen rond de Universitaire Kapeldiensten," Wending 17 (1962). 51 Leo M. van der Mey, "Van de hoofdredakteur," Off-, September 1967. 52 Th.J. de Looy, "Snoepgoed van de liefde," Off-, September 1967. 53 H. Meijer, "Theologie van de status quo," Off-, April 1969; Arnold Reijndorp, "Revolutie christelijke opdracht ofwel is de kerk de antichrist?," Off-, April 1969.
19 The students’ opinion on the churches also reflected this leftist and progressive discourse. The most important question with regard to the churches was whether the churches supported the revolution or the status quo. According to the students, the churches had to be more active in society to back the forces of change. If church leadership was responsible for the obstruction of change, this actually meant a betrayal of the Christian message.54 This call for a more active church in society was not only intended for the columns of Off-. As the Catholic Church and the DRC tried to open themselves up for dialogue in a ‘democratic’ or pluralist setting, the students tried to vocalize themselves in this dialogue. As if they were coordinated by a central action committee or driven by a common program, different youth groups sent out their message to the churches. The youth’s call for more social engaged and active churches appeared at different platforms in the three big churches of the Netherlands. Though the youth in the Catholic Church and DRC had the chance to vocalize themselves in the experimental church events, the absence of such an event in the RCN did not hinder the youth there. In 1969, a group of young RCN-members from Amsterdam complained that the synod of the RCN ‘had been non-committed and silent on current global issues for already 25 years’. With this, they meant that issues like ‘peace and war, ecumenism, racism and development aid’ did not receive enough attention.55 They started the group Sy-noodkreet (play on words with ‘Synod’ and ‘emergency call’).56 Sy-noodkreet did not have the right to speak in the synod, but wanted to set up an ‘extra-parliamentarian action’ to influence the members of the synod. They clearly asked for a more practical engagement of the church with the world:
‘Should the synod, like many believe, restrict itself to purely organizational affairs and leave the stances in global issues to the local churches? Or can we expect from the synod that it calls the self-evident situation of millions of people starving and dying, into question on an evangelical basis?’57
In and around the Pastoral Council of the Catholic Church, the youth brought forward comparable arguments against an inward-looking church, in favor of a more practical
54 "Revolutie christelijke opdracht ofwel is de kerk de antichrist?." 55 "Gereformeerde jeugd gaat Synode kritisch begeleiden," Trouw, April 16 1969; A.J. Klei, "'Synoodkreet met de bus naar Sneek," Trouw, May 10 1969. 56 G. Dekker, De stille revolutie: De ontwikkeling van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland tussen 1950 en 1990 (Kampen: Kok, 1992), 47-48. 57 Klei, "'Synoodkreet met de bus naar Sneek."
20 engagement with the world. The Catholic students established their own ‘Student council’, shortly Stucon. More than 1.000 students, Catholics and non-Catholics, were involved in the Stucon discussion groups in the different cities. These groups held discussions in preparation of the Council. The topics that were discussed in the groups of Stucon ranged from liturgy to development aid. Because only two representatives of Stucon could participate in the Council, Stucon decided to write advices for the Council and the episcopate.58 During the Pastoral Council, which ran from 1966 to 1970, the activism of Stucon became more radical. On the eve of the Council, the students had made clear to the bishops that they were against the Church as a dogmatic institute of power. However, as the Council progressed, the students got more frustrated when they saw that their input was ignored. Therefore, they decided to organize their own ‘shadow-council’ in 1968. This shadow-council almost completely focused on the mission of the church with regard to development aid and peace. This shadow-council criticized the role of rich countries in the UN-conference regarding free trade in New Delhi, professed its support for the Vietcong in Vietnam and suggested to name new parish churches after Camillo Torres and Che Guevara. In spite of the shadow-council, the most radical statements of the students did not make it to the official council.59 The youth in the DRC managed best to let themselves hear in the General Church Meeting of its church. In 1969, Protestant students in the NCSV who were critical of the church had started local groups. The name of these groups altogether was the Critical Church Project (KRIK). Representatives of the KRIK attended the General Church Meeting of 1970, where they just like their young fellow-Protestants and Catholics criticized the lack of engagement of the church with the world:
‘It is nonsense that the church only should speak when nobody speaks, it is even unimaginable arrogant. The church has to back groups that aim to turn the society in the right direction and when the church only speaks if nobody speaks, it is the way to marginalize the church.’60
58 "Duidelijke stem in het algemeen beraad: Studentenconcilie al maanden bezig," De Tijd, November 26 1966; "Konklusies aangeboden aan Pastoraal Concilie: Studenten hebben bezwaar tegen kerk als instituut," Limburgsch Dagblad, April 24 1967; "Studenten-protest bij bisschoppen," De Tijd, May 1 1967. 59 "Schaduwconcilie in Nijmegen," De Tijd, March 13 1968; "Studentenconcilie klaagt Johnson aan," Trouw, March 14 1968. 60 Looy, Ik kon gisteravond niet slapen en nu nog niet: Verslag AKV'70, 25.
21
About 25 percent of the participants of the GCM was beneath 25 years old, so KRIK and its sympathizers could manifest themselves prominently. With their returning emphasis on the needs in the world, they set the agenda in the GCM, which was very much concerned with the place of the church in the world.61 The cooperation in the inter-confessional students’ magazine and the similarities between the activist groups Sy-noodkreet, Stucon and KRIK, show that many Christian students shared a world-aimed but Christian-rooted inspiration. This Christian inspiration was often anti-establishment, in the sense that it refused to see Christianity as a defender of the status quo. This view on the church also had its political connotations. Statements that the church should back suppressed groups and support change were inherently political. In the DRC, they even called this the ‘political pastorate’. The youth felt they stood at the sidelines of the churches, for their criticism did not immediately result in change. Nonetheless, they had the possibility to promote a more active role for the churches in their protest groups. 62 This politicization of the churches was neither an exclusively Dutch phenomenon, nor can it be attributed to the protest-generation alone. On a global scale, the World Council of Churches demonstrated a strong engagement with social and political problems in the world. In 1966, a conference on Church and Society of the WCC had put the global issues high on the agenda of the WCC. This was elaborated at the fourth Assembly of the WCC in 1968 in Uppsala, where theological treatments on doctrinal differences made way for speeches on distribution of wealth among the nations and racism. 63 In Uppsala, the common mission of the churches in the world was the starting point for ecumenism. ‘Uppsala’ was present in the discussions at the GCM, as people complained that the churches still had not put the fine words of Uppsala into action. In
61 Ik kon gisteravond niet slapen en nu nog niet: Verslag AKV'70, 87-89. 62 A. van der Meiden, AKV'70: Brieven, citaten, uitspraken en commentaar naar aanleiding van de eerste Algemene Kerkvergadering der Hervormde Kerk (Baarn: Bosch & Keuning, 1970), 21; Walter Goddijn, Pastoraal concilie van de Nederlandse kerkprovincie. 3 Tweede plenaire vergadering: Missie en ontwikkelingswerk (Amersfoort: Katholiek Archief, 1969), 187. 63 H.M. de Lange, "Genéve 1966," Wending 21 (1966); "De wereldconferentie kerk en samenleving," Wending 21 (1966); A.H. van den Heuvel, "Uppsala - Downsala," Wending 23 (1968); H.M. de Lange, "Op de zijbanken van Uppsala," Wending 23 (1968); Norman Goodall and Assembly of the World Council of Churches, The Uppsala report 1968: Official report of the fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Uppsala July 4- 20, 1968 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968); Albert H. van den Heuvel, Unity of mankind: Speeches from the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Uppsala 1968 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1969).
22 addition, the modus operandi of the KRIK at the GCM seemed to be inspired by ‘Uppsala’, where the youth had separated themselves from to rest to organize protests.64 This search for a more practical engagement of the church in society also gave an impulse to the Christian-Marxist dialogue. Traditionally many churches rejected or condemned Marxism. On the other hand, most Marxists held strong atheist positions. Apart from peripheral individuals who wanted to bridge both traditions, mainstream Christianity and Marxism stood hostile against each other. In the early 1960s, this started to change. On the one hand, progressive Christians pursued a strategy of dialogue with the modern world. On the other hand, Marxist political parties in countries like France and Italy made some more positive remarks about Christianity. Whether this latter was electoral-driven or not, it created an environment in which conferences with both Christian and Marxist intellectuals became possible. Theologians such as Dorothee Sölle, Johann Baptist Metz and Giulio Girardi were involved in these conferences, next to Marxist philosophers like Ernst Bloch and Louis Althusser.65 This emerging Christian-Marxist dialogue was attractive to the youth, who saw their commitment to both Christianity and revolution confirmed. In 1971, the Catholic theologian Ted Schoof noted in an article on the course of Catholic theology after Vatican II, that there was ‘an active theological branch in the “students protest”’.66 This probably referred to the magazine Tegenspraak, in which young theologians worked together in what they called a ‘theological collective’. Tegenspraak for example elaborated on the church as a ‘society-changing structure’ against bourgeois culture. In addition, the magazine Eltheto, originally linked to the Protestant NCSV, took up the Christian-Marxist dialogue enthusiastically by publishing a pamphlet like Barth is a socialist.67 Not everyone in the churches was happy with the Christian-Marxist dialogue or even the call for a more practical engagement of the church. In the DRC, a group of
64 E. van der V., "Studenten," Wending 23 (1968); D. de L., "Pastoraal Concilie," Wending 23 (1969). 65 Roland Boer, Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019), 118-19; A.Th. van Leeuwen, "Dialoog met het communisme," Wending 21 (1966); A.Th. van der Leeuwen, "Dialoog als de taal van het atoomtijdperk," Wending 23 (1968); A.K., "Te weinig kritiek op marxistische modellen," Wending 25 (1971); Kevin Smyth and Hoger Katechetisch Instituut, A new catechism: Catholic faith for adults, ed. Kevin Smyth and Hoger Katechetisch Instituut (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 32; Bernard Delfgaauw, De jonge Marx, 2 ed. (Baarn: Het Wereldvenster, 1966), 119-26. 66 T.M. Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk: Op zoek naar een nieuwe koers," Wending 25 (1970): 424. 67 Kollektief Tegenspraak, "Aggiornamento: Van emancipatie naar integratie," Tegenspraak 1, no. 1 (1969); "Het aggiornamento verslindt zijn kinderen," Tegenspraak 1, no. 1 (1969); Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Barth is socialist, vol. 38, Eltheto-brochure reeks (Zeist: Nederlandse Christen Studenten Vereniging, 1972). The magazine of the theological collective Tegenspraak (published between 1969 and 1971) should not be confused with the students magazine Tegenspraak, (published in Nijmegen between 1977 and 1984).
23 ministers had written a pamphlet called Getuigenis (testimony). They were ‘against the politicization of Salvation, in the sense of an uprising against the “establishment” and an overthrow of the current social, political order and structure’.68 In the Catholic Church, the democratic possibilities to radicalize the church through the Pastoral Council seemed to have ended as well. As a Catholic observer at the GCM, the board of the Pastoral Council Joseph Lescrauweaet M.S.C. told the Protestants about the processes in the Catholic Church:
‘If there’s one thing we have learned in the past years, it is that the value of a council only turns out afterwards. When a statement reflects what lives in the church, than we say afterwards that this statement was something guided by the Holy Spirit. If the response in the community does not follow, the statement will eventually fade away, like it happened in some cases.’69
In the years after the Pastoral Council, the Vatican would intervene in the Dutch church by appointing two conservative bishops against the will of the dioceses and the episcopate. It was clear that in the eyes of the curia, the Holy Spirit did not rest upon the revolutionary direction the protest-generation wanted to take with the Church.70 These serious attacks on the youth’s vision of the church were an example of the increasing polarization in the Dutch churches in the early 1970s. As a pamphlet like Getuigenis even accused the revolutionary Christians of heresy, this challenged the theologians among them to show their theological legitimacy. However, within the churches the possibilities to show their theology seemed to decrease. Besides, they were against the theoretical exercise of theology in inner-church affairs, if it was not combined with practical engagement in society. Therefore, young Marxist-inspired Christians looked for new ways for action. In 1973, two people from the KRIK-project, Rinse Reeling Brouwer and Herman Meijer, came up with the plan for a Dutch ‘Chrsitians for Socialism’ movement.71 Though the name Christians for Socialism referred to a global movement, which had started in Chile, it was firmly rooted in the national context of theological circles around student-
68 Graaf, Het Getuigenis: Motief en effect, 12. 69 Looy, Ik kon gisteravond niet slapen en nu nog niet: Verslag AKV'70, 25-26. 70 Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing: Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, 191-97. 71 Berg, De Nederlandse Christen-Studenten Vereniging, 1896-1985, 210-11.
24 magazines like Eltheto and Tegenspraak. When CfS was founded in 1974, it gathered people from different religious backgrounds around the shared mission:
‘To enhance the movement for a socialist state in the Netherlands and to represent the socialist factor in the church as a whole and just the one through the other. This happens from the thought that there is a positive relation between Christian faith and socialist politics.’72
The CfS spoke about ‘the church as a whole’ as they considered the differences between the churches not that relevant for the goal of their organization. Nevertheless, the young theologians in the CfS-movement had entered the Christian-Marxist dialogue from different theological traditions.
In general, the three biggest churches in the Netherlands struggled with their position in the world in 1960s. We have to see this in relation to the debate on secularization that confronted the church with the changing religious experience of many people. A significant group of church leaders realized that believers were alienated from the church. These church leaders asked for religious renewal to bring the churches back on track in modern society. To define the direction of this religious renewal, they wanted to step into dialogue with their community through more or less ‘democratic’ initiatives like the Pastoral Council and the GCM. This turnaround of the church structure did not give rise to one concrete vision for the future, but rather confirmed the pluralism of different factions with conflicting views. A faction that managed to stand out in these meetings was the youth. With their action groups, often inspired by international examples or examples from other churches, they promoted a strong vision for religious renewal in which the church had to be a society- changing force. For some, this even had to go in Marxist direction. Young theologians and theology-students contributed to this activism with providing theological arguments in favour or Marxism. This was not the start of the Christian-Marxist dialogue that already existed in the early 1960s. However, with the involvement of the youth, the Christian- Marxist dialogue received a strong push from below.
72 H. Meijer, "Van introspektie tot uitdaging," Eltheto 50 (1975): 10.
25
2. Marching in Step with Marx
For the churches, it was hard to keep up in the rapidly changing society of the 1960s and 1970s. This made the churches very suitable research objects for sociologists.73 One of them was Mady Thüng, who finished her dissertation about the mission of the Church in modern societies in 1976. According to Thüng, the secularization resulted from the lethargy of the churches. To turn this development in the future, churches had to become drivers of change in society. Thüng’s discourse about the churches as drivers of change corresponded with the position of the youth in the church. However, this was not only a sociological position, as theology was just as concerned with the task of the churches as sociology.74 Theologians and sociologists could share the conviction that the churches had failed in the past, but theologians had their own arguments for that. For theologians, this failure was the result of wrong theological interpretations of the Gospel. The alliances with conservative forces in society were due to this.75 It was the aim of the CfS-movement to correct this by promoting a social-engaged theology. Actually, this social-engaged theology was plural as different theological traditions could engage with society. In spite of this theological pluralism, there was sense of unity in the movement which was strongly related to the common interest in Marx. Therefore, this chapter wants to analyze how the the theological pluralism in the CfS-movement was supported by the Marxist analysis.
One Movement, One History?
Though the initiative for a Christians for Socialism movement in 1974 came from within the student association NCSV, groups from outside the NCSV were involved in the preparations as well. Among them were Catholic groups like the earlier-mentioned magazine Tegenspraak and a group of Dutch priests who had worked in Chile but were expelled after the coup in 1973, the so-called Calama-group. As a movement, CfS reached out to different groups of progressive Christians with diverse backgrounds. Due to this
73 For the involvement of sociologists in the Catholic Church, see: Chris Dols, Fact factory: Sociological expertise and episcopal decision making in the Netherlands, 1946-1972 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2015). 74 Mady A. Thung, The precarious organisation: Sociological explorations of the Church's mission and structure (Den Haag: Mouton, 1976). 75 Marquardt, Barth is socialist, 38, 1-4.
26 developing network of progressive Christian groups, the movement managed to scatter all over the country. In the first years, local divisions of the CfS-movement started in Utrecht, Rotterdam, Delft, Amsterdam, Wageningen, Breda, ‘t Gooi, Leiden, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Groningen, Den Haag, Twente and Limburg.76 In spite of this strong regional spreading, the movement was proud of its loose organization and did not want to give in to overly formal and rigid organizational structures. Therefore the movement decided not to become a registered legal subject itself, but resorted under the NCSV.77 The internal structure was unorthodox as well, as there was a ‘steering group’ of non-specialized members instead of a board in which each member had a specified function. This steering group had to organize the monthly ‘national meetings’, which were granted the highest authority. Due to this diffuse division of authority in the movement, the secretary tended to be the most stable factor because he was the only one who was paid for his work for CfS.78 It is therefore important to realize that the CfS-movement was not a dominating actor in the lives of CfS-members, in the sense that it defined the whole religious identity of its members. Christians for Socialism could easily be member of other progressive Christian organizations at the same time. The CfS-movement was part of a bigger network of progressive Christian organizations, magazines and education institutes. There was for example much overlap with magazines like Te Elfder Ure and Eltheto. These magazines had a progressive Christian background but experienced a Marxist turn in the late 1960s and early 1970s.79 It was figurative for the leftist wind that blew over the universities. Therefore the universities turned out to be a fertile soil for the recruitment of members for the Christians for Socialism. Because the CfS-movement had important roots in the universities and student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, most CfS-members were well-educated. Many of them studied theology or had studied theology. Regional divisions of the CfS-movement in university cities were often strongly connected to the theological faculties in these cities. This was also a reason why clergymen, both Catholic and Protestant, were a significant group within the CfS-movement. 80
76 Bruggen, "De internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland," 85-86; Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 6-8, 15. 77 "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 99. 78 Baas, "Hun god was links: Een historische analyse van de Nederlandse afdeling van de beweging 'Christenen voor het socialisme' (1974-1994) als Nieuwe sociale beweging," 49-52. 79 Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," 65-69. 80 Baas, "Hun god was links: Een historische analyse van de Nederlandse afdeling van de beweging 'Christenen voor het socialisme' (1974-1994) als Nieuwe sociale beweging," 63-66; Bruggen, "De
27
Another stronghold for the CfS-movement was the Agogisch-Theologische Opleiding (Agogic-Theological Education, hereafter ATO). The ATO was founded in 1973 by the former Dominican Jan Bonsen, who also had been involved in Tegenspraak and Eltheto. With the ATO, Bonsen wanted to provide an alternative for the classical theological education in universities and seminaries. The ATO had to align more with the education in the social and pedagogic academies, in which social workers were trained. Therefore the ATO worked together with social academy De Horst, which was notorious for its progressiveness, radical educational renewal and socially-critical education. The ATO became a center of church- and socially-critical reflection too. The program attracted both Catholic and Protestant students, but fell under the authority of the Katholieke Theologische Hogeschool Utrecht (Catholic Theological University Utrecht). Due to the church- and socially-critical setup of the education program, the bishops soon considered the ATO to be controversial. In 1982, cardinal Willebrands decided to closed down the ATO.81 While analyzing the theological debate among the Christians for Socialism, it is important to realize that this debate also took place outside the movement. These could be places like the ATO, theological faculties or magazines which were related to the students movement. Still, this interaction with the outside world did not mean that regional divisions of the CfS-movement could each develop their specific own sound. Notwithstanding the multiple discussions in- and outside the CfS-movement, some ideological principles kept the Christians for Socialism together. Coordination in the CfS- movement was therefore not so much granted by powerful internal structures, but rather by these ideological principles that defined the margins of the theological debate.
Neither Secularizing Christ, Nor Baptizing Socialism
The guiding principles about the nature of the movement and its relation to the outside world had been laid down in the process of founding the CfS-movement. This scheme of principles implied that the CfS neither wanted to become a socialist party in the churches,
internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland," 96. 81 Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," 68-69; A. van Heijst, M. Derks, and M. Monteiro, Ex caritate: Kloosterleven, apostolaat en nieuwe spirit van actieve vrouwelijke religieuzen in Nederland in de 19e en 20e eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), 975-76.
28 nor a Christian party in the socialist movement. This faction formation would create a gap between the CfS-members and the other Christians or between CfS-members and the other socialists, whereas they wanted to be a full member of both the churches and the socialist movement. This scheme corresponded with the principles as they were employed by Christians for Socialism movements in other countries.82 This ground scheme for the CfS-movement prescribing its relations to the churches and socialist movement was not a Dutch invention. In Chile, a Christians for Socialism- movement had started in 1971 with a group of 80 priests who supported the socialist government of Salvador Allende.83 Already in 1971 this Chilean CfS marked its territory by defining the relation to the Christian and Socialist world and therewith inspired the creation of CfS-movements in other countries. Nonetheless, the founders of the Dutch CfS- movement denied to be directly animated by the Chilean example. On the other hand, Reeling Brouwer admitted that the founders were informed about the CfS-movement in Chile.84 Altogether, it is impossible to persist that the Dutch CfS-movement was by no means affected by the international CfS-movement, whether this was direct or indirect. Through the intellectual community of the Christian-Marxist dialogue, which was truly international, the idea of a movement committed to both the churches and the socialist movement must have reached the group around the KRIK-project. The Dutch CfS-movement transferred the rather abstract ground scheme of principles to the Dutch context, where they tried to position the movement in the history of the dialogue between Christianity and Socialism in the Netherlands. In a brief description on the history of the movement in 1978, Reeling Brouwer invoked dialectics to put the CfS-movement in its historical context.85 On the one hand, they distanced from religious-socialism, because it had tried to baptize socialism. On the other hand, they did not want become a movement around a secularized Christ, because this would be a messianic sect.86 It was clever that in this dialectical contrast between Christianizing socialism and secularizing Christ, the CfS turned out to be a synthesis that reconciled both positions.
82 Bruggen, "De internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland," 85. 83 Fernández, "Oral History of the Chilean Movement ‘Christians for Socialism’, 1971–73," 283-85. 84 Bruggen, "De internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland," 85; Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 3. 85 "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 5. 86 H. Meijer, "Christenen voor het socialisme: Verslag van de sekretaris over de periode: najaar 1973 tot juli 1975," (Woudschoten: Christenen voor het Socialisme, 1975), 1.
29 The historical perspective that was so essential to Marxism, played an important role in the CfS-movement as well. This dialectic self-understanding made the CfS- movement consider itself the ideological development of earlier stages of the Christian- marxist dialogue. This might also explain why there was some unease with a more geographical account of the history of CfS. To see the Dutch CfS-movement as a mode that was coincidentally imported from Chile, underestimated the dialectical logic behind its emergence. This historical perspective on ideology and religion was strongly inherited from the KRIK-project, where students had studied the Marxist criticism of religion extensively.87 This line of Marxist criticism of religion was continued in the CfS- movement, given the considerations leading up to the initial plan for the movement in 1973:
‘We wondered whether – conform the development of the young Marx – criticism of religion becomes fruitful only than, when the rupture she brings about is seen as a prerequisite for going up a path of wholly new practical and theoretical discoveries.’88
Until the early 1980s, the Marxist criticism of religion remained one of the pillars of the CfS-movement.89 This ongoing relevance of the criticism of religion was also reflected in the Action Program, which the movement drew up in 1977. In two of seven points in this Action Program, the CfS-movement formulated a mission with regard to theology. The first was to ‘liberate theology from her Babylonian captivity in the bourgeois thought’ and the second was to ‘stimulate new theological reflection’.90 The Marxist notion that religion as a part of the so-called ‘superstructure’ was a false appearance of the dominating bourgeois ideology, was a starting point for the CfS-movement. Acknowledging that
87 Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 3. 88 "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 3. 89 This was a.o. illustrated by a series of publications about the Marxist criticism of religion by the publisher Eltheto-NCSV. Due to the overlap between Eltheto and CfS, which were both aligned to the NCSV, you can say that this series also reflects the interest for the Marxist criticism of religion within the CfS-movement at that time. About the relation between Eltheto and CfS: "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 83-84. The Eltheto-series about the Marxist criticism of religion: T. Salemink, ed., Teksten Godsdienstkritiek I: Marxisten over Godsdienst 1844-1914 (Zeist: Eltheto-NCSV, 1978); Teksten Godsdienstkritiek II: Christen- socialisten in Crisistijd 1903-1941 (Zeist: Eltheto-NCSV, 1980); Teksten Godsdienstkritiek III: Marxisten over Godsdienst 1913-1944 (Zeist: Eltheto-NCSV, 1982). 90 Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 71-76.
30 bourgeois capitalism had absorbed religion, they wanted to undo religion from its bourgeois chains.91
Marxist Vocation
In the CfS-movement there was no real defender of capitalism, so the anti-capitalist commitment was an important unifying force in the CfS-movement. This radical criticism of capitalism was obviously inspired by Karl Marx, but even at that time it was not common for theologians to welcome the Marxist analysis in their theology. The Dutch theologian Arend van Leeuwen, who as a professor in ‘theology of social activities’ in Nijmegen influenced many students, was a trailblazer in that respect.92 His ‘economic theology’ eagerly wanted to debunk religion as something that was produced by capitalism:
‘The economic theory, underlying and legitimizing the prevailing system, exercises real power. She has a divine allure. Marx describes her as fetishism. This religion needs to be fought by the biblical faith, for: ‘thou shalt not have other gods before me’.’93
Along with Marx, Van Leeuwen saw religion as a capitalist illusion intended to obscure people’s understanding of reality. Therefore Van Leeuwen formulated the desire to transform theology, in order that it would pertain to reality again.94 The statement that theology was captured in bourgeois thinking and had to be liberated, corresponded with Van Leeuwen’s ideas about a transformation of theology. As a blueprint for theological thinking and transformation in the CfS-movement, this ‘liberation of theology’ also had a strong historical dimension. Liberation could only occur as a moment in the history of captivity. The historical appearances of theology reflected this history of captivity.95 Therefore this mission of the CfS-movement was more
91 Salemink, Teksten Godsdienstkritiek I: Marxisten over Godsdienst 1844-1914, 14-16; J. Bonsen, Politieke Lezing van de Bijbel, een Werkboek (Zeist: Eltheto-NCSV, 1978), 9-12. 92 T. Salemink and B. van Dijk, "Van doorbraakdominee tot marxist," Eltheto 69 (1983). 93 Hoogstraten, "Transformatie van de theologie," 42. 94 "Transformatie van de theologie," 41. 95 R. Zuurmond, "Christenen voor het Socialisme en de theologie," Opstand 6, no. 1 (1979): 28.
31 concerned with reinterpretation of the historical appearances of theology to redeem them from their bourgeois burden, than to create something entirely new. When Van Leeuwen spoke about the ‘biblical faith’, he seemed to suggest there was an original Christian message to which theology had to return. However, not every theologian in the CfS-movement took over Van Leeuwen’s interpretation of what this biblical faith would be. One could say that theologians in the CfS-movement more easily accepted Van Leeuwen’s analysis of the problem of theology, than his solution. The theologians in the CfS-movement considered themselves well-able to define what this ‘biblical faith’ or original message had to be. For this purpose they relied on the theological traditions of their confessional backgrounds, in which they wanted to bring about a religious renewal that could undergo the Marxist criticism of religion. Though the Marxist vocation to ‘liberate theology from her Babylonian captivity in the bourgeois thought’ addressed theology as a universal category, the CfS-movement did not pretend to have a universal formula to do so. This meant that the theologians were not bound to a certain Marxist method or approach that could turn any theological tradition, whether this was Barthian or neo-Thomist, into Marxist Barthianism or Marxist neo-Thomism. Instead, theologians in the CfS-movement created the moments of liberation within their own theological tradition themselves. Therefore Catholics and Protestants knew more or less autonomous trajectories, within this framework for theological discussion in the CfS-movement.
The CfS-movement was an example of transnational transfer, in the sense that the movement imported an ideological ground scheme. Yet, it is hard to say that the Dutch CfS-movement was a copy of the CfS-movements in other countries. The building blocks of the movement, the progressive or even rebellious groups in the three biggest churches of the Netherlands, were not equal to the building blocks in other countries. So the transnational example of the CfS-movement did not impose a certain ideology, but outlined some margins for the theological debate within which the different groups could find each other. In this theological debate, Karl Marx was an important point of reference. Theologians like Arend van Leeuwen adapted the Marxist criticism of religion, arguing that religion was in fact part of a prevailing capitalist system. At the same time, Van Leeuwen interpreted this as a diagnosis for ‘theology’. Because most Christians for
32 Socialism also agreed on this criticism as a diagnosis, anti-capitalism was an unifying force in the movement. However, not everybody in the movement agreed on the remedies that Van Leeuwen proposed in his ‘economic theology’. Together, the Marxist analysis of religion and the ideological principles of the CfS- movement give an excellent overview of the theological debate in the CfS-movement. After Marx had pinpointed the problem of theology, different theologians looked for solutions within the margins of the ideological principles of the CfS-movement. This is where the different theological traditions came in as problem solvers, which will be further discussed in the next chapter.
33
3. Babylonian Captivity in the Bourgeois Thought
The theologians Wilhelm-Friedrich Marquardt and Johann Baptist Metz were both born in Germany in 1928 and both involved in the Christian-Marxist dialogue. Nevertheless, they came from two entire different traditions. Marquardt was a Protestant who stood in the theological tradition of Karl Barth, whereas Metz was a Catholic who had been trained by Karl Rahner. It underlines that the Christian-Marxist dialogue could be entered from very divergent traditions. This was very important for the Christians for Socialism. Inspiring figures from varying theological backgrounds enabled the Christians for Socialism to explore Marxism while staying in their own theological tradition. This chapter will look at these different traditions in the CfS-movement and their interaction with each other.
Shadows of Fascism
Already in the KRIK-project, young Protestant theologians engaged heavily with Karl Barth. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) rose to fame in the twentieth century with his Kirchliche Dogmatik. In this multi-volume magnus opus that was published between 1932 and 1967, he developed a ‘dialectical theology’. This dialectical theology stressed the difference between God and humans, in which God was presented as an absolute ‘Gegenüber’. Humans could not get to know God by studying the nature or the human world. Dialectical thelogy said that God only revealed himself ‘Senkrecht von Oben’, which meant that God only reaches out to the humans on his initiative. For Barth, this movement of God towards the humans was the revelation in the Gospel and Jesus Christ.96 With this dialectical theology, he would become one of the most important, if not the most important, Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. Though his theology was controversial for theologians in the strictest Protestant churches in the Netherlands, his influence on the more mainstream churches like the DRC was massive. In that church, he became the leading theologian. In the RCN, they were initially very critical of Barth, because he went straight against the teachings of RCN-founder Abraham Kuyper.
96 Michael Beintker, "Karl Barth," in The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 180-83.
34
However, a new generation of theologians after the Second World War wanted to overcome this aversion.97 Many Dutch theologians studied Barth’s work and life thoroughly, as he was recognized as a point of reference for Protestant theology. Because his work and life played amidst of the First and Second World War, there was also attention for Barth’s activities in the political chaos of that time. This was even more incited by the fact that Barth himself had been member of the Socialist party and at several occasions suggested a link between his theology and practical political engagement.98 For some theologians, the socialist engagement of Karl Barth worked as a catalyst for their own political orientation. The most famous example in the Netherlands was the theologian Kornelis Heiko Miskotte (1894-1976) and with him some members of the so- called exegetical Amsterdamse School, which was partially built upon the theology of Barth and Miskotte. In the line of his lifelong teacher Barth, Miskotte was a socialist without upheaving this socialism into ‘Christian-socialism’. This socialist position following the theology of Barth, was also held by theologians like Frits Kuiper (1898-1974), Kleijs Kroon (1904-1983), Arend van Leeuwen (1918-1993) and Bert ter Schegget (1927- 2001).99 However, this did not mean that every theologian in the tradition of Barth reached the same political conclusion. Within the political party Christelijk Historische Unie (Christian Historical Union, CHU), which was strongly associated with the DRC, there was a Barthian wing too. Theologians like Gerrit van Neftrik (1904-1972) and Theo Haitjema (1888-1972) combined the theology of Barth with CHU-membership. This was intolerable for the earlier mentioned socialist theologians who saw in Barth an opponent of Christian politics.100
97 C.M. van Driel, "'Een grote in het rijk der geesten van de theologie': De kijk op Karl Barth in hervormd- gereformeerde en christelijk-gereformeerde kring tijdens de jaren zestig," Theologia Reformata 56, no. 3 (2013): 258-59; G. Harinck and L. Winkeler, "De Twintigste Eeuw," in Handboek Nederlandse Kerkgeschiedenis, ed. H. Selderhuis (Kampen: Kok, 2006), 838-40; Dekker, De stille revolutie: De ontwikkeling van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland tussen 1950 en 1990, 41-42. 98 Martien Brinkman, Karl Barths socialistische stellingname: Over de betekenis van het socialisme voor de ontwikkeling van zijn theologie (Baarn: Ten Have, 1982), 112-13; G. Hunsinger, "Towards a Radical Barth," in Karl Barth and Radical Politics, ed. G. Hunsinger (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), 77. 99 Herman de Liagre Böhl, Miskotte: Theoloog in de branding, 1894-1976 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2017), 101-03; E.D.J. de Jongh, Vloeken en bidden om een nieuwe aarde: De dagen van Bert ter Schegget (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), 42-43, 126-27, 30; Frits Kuiper, Christen en socialist (Zeist: NCSV, 1979), 123-25; K.H. Kroon, Stenen voor stenen?: Gesprek over kerk en humanisme : vier brieven (Baarn: Wereldvenster, 1953), 25-42; T. Salemink, "Prophet in a Secular World: Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen 1918-1993," Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context 23, no. 3 (1994): 207, 10-11. 100 Marquardt, Barth is socialist, 38, 1; Marcel ten Hooven and Ronald de Jong, Geschiedenis van de Christelijk- Historische Unie 1908-1980 (2008), 39, 321.
35 This opposition against the use of Barth in Christian politics was set on fire by the German theologian Friedricht Wilhelm Marquardt (1928-2002), who was active as a student minister in Berlin. One of the founders of the CfS-movement, Rinse Reeling Brouwer, recounts a lecture of Marquardt for the NCSV in 1972:
‘Just like in his previous book on Israel in the thinking of Barth, he re-read the texts of Barth in a way that touched upon our questions, unveiled repressed aspects of the master and tried to help his theology beyond its own boundaries.’101
In the same year, Marquardt published his Habilitationsschrift on the socialism of Barth Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths. In his book, he developed the argument that people who said to follow Barth but did not share his socialist engagement, had misunderstood Barth. Though the reception of Barth as a socialist and the surrounding debate were not new, Marquardt jumped into the debate with an activist tone that was appealing to the students.102 It was clear that Marquardt had enflamed students of the NCSV, as the organization published a translated brochure of Marquardt called ‘Barth is socialist’. The NCSV and later the CfS-movement transferred Marquardt’s theological activism to the Dutch context. With this activism, they even managed to gain sympathy from the older proponents of Barth’s socialism like Frits Kuiper and Bert ter Schegget.103 Marquardt’s book was a frontal attack on the interpretation of Barth as a dogmatist, whose works were in the first place restorations of an old theology. This would isolate the theology of Barth from its social and political context, which was problematic for Marquardt who saw Barth’s socialism as a key to understand Barth’s theology. According to Marquardt, Barth’s socialism was not an ideology that competed with his Christianity, but alternately a socialist praxis in which his theology was rooted. To see how this socialist praxis affected the theology, Marquardt payed much attention to Barth’s reaction on the emergence of fascism and Nazism. In the 1930s, Barth had publicly
101 R. Reeling Brouwer, "Christenen voor het Socialisme," in Frits Kuiper (1898-1794) Doopsgezind theoloog: Voordrachten en getuigenissen over Kuiper en een selectie van zijn brieven, ed. A.G. Hoekema and Pieter Post (Hilversum: Verloren, 2016), 34. 102 Rinse Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen (Den Haag: Boekencentrum, 1988), 11-12. 103 Jongh, Vloeken en bidden om een nieuwe aarde: De dagen van Bert ter Schegget, 324; Reeling Brouwer, "Christenen voor het Socialisme," 36; Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (München: Kaiser, 1972); Barth is socialist, 38.
36 condemned these ideologies, which tended to assign divine authority to the human world. In Marquardt’s explanation, Barth’s criticism of religion (as opposed to faith) and natural theology was therefore partially a function of his socialist praxis. With this presupposed relation between Barth’s socialist political praxis and his theological fight against fascism- supporting religion, Marquardt presented socialism as a relevant position in the German Kirchenkampf of the 1930s.104 The history of the Kirchenkampf turned out to be important for the Barthians in the CfS. The Kirchenkampf was a historical conflict between two factions in the German Evangelical Church on the eve of the Second World War; one faction supporting (Deutsche Christen) and one faction (Bekennende Kirche) opposing the Nazi-regime. Barth was among the leading theologians in the Bekennende Kirche, as he was the main author of the Barmen Thesen. In the Barmen thesen, the Bekennende Kirche supported a dialectical theology and argued that the church could not be subjected to Nazification because the church had its own religious territory which was free from state. For the Barthians in the CfS-movement, this example of theology against an inhumane political ideology worked inspiring. Linking Barth’s socialist praxis to his engagement in the Kirchenkampf, Barthians in the CfS-movement started to use the Kirchenkampf as a model to analyze inner-church relations. The Barthians among the Christians for Socialism tended to see a right-wing and a left-wing in the churches, in which the oppressed left-wing was Marxist. The CfS-movement therefore supported the people who worked in the churches or in Christian organizations, but were sanctioned or discriminated because they were a member of Communistische Partij Nederland (Communist Party in the Netherlands; CPN).105 For a proper reproduction of the Kirchenkampf in the churches in the 1970s and 1980s, the Barthians had to provide arguments why their Marxist positions equaled Barth’s position. For this, a fundamental overthinking of the relation between Barth’s theology and his socialism was needed. After all, Barth’s dialectical theology had clearly distinguished between God and the human world. What were then the reasons to assure
104 Brinkman, Karl Barths socialistische stellingname: Over de betekenis van het socialisme voor de ontwikkeling van zijn theologie, 12-13, 116; Marquardt, Barth is socialist, 38, 8, 18-19, 27-28; Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen, 15-16. 105 H. Meijer, "De Hervormde Kerk en het Marxisme," Opstand 5, no. 3 (1978); R. Reeling Brouwer, "Een Oproep tot Waakzaamheid," Opstand 5, no. 5 (1979); R. Gosker, "De Berlijnse Kerkstrijd van 1974," Opstand 5, no. 5 (1978); "Kerkelijk kommitee tegen beroepsverboden," Opstand 6, no. 3 (1979); "CPN en het bijzonder onderwijs," Opstand 6, no. 6 (1979).
37 that socialism most corresponded with God’s will? For the Barthians in the CfS-movement, it was not possible to identify the socialist movement as a chosen movement within salvation history. Those theologies who identified God in politics, like religious-socialism, were actually criticized by Barth. Instead, the Barthians in the CfS-movement saw an analogy between Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik and the dogmas of dialectic materialism with regard to their intent to dismantle bourgeois culture. With other words, they saw a parallel between God’s Kingdom and the socialist movement in the protest they radically formulated against the existing reality. Based on this analogy, a fellowship was supposed.106 This interpretation of Barth was called left-Barthianism. This fellowship based on the parallel between God’s kingdom and the socialist movement, provided a blueprint for religious renewal. Arend van Leeuwen even argued that Marx was the ‘needle’s eye’ theology had to go through. With this, he meant that a confrontation with Marxism could lead theology into modern times. Because theology was concerned with the battle against idolatry, Marxism could help to identify the new idols of capitalism in modern times. Theology was also infected with these bourgeois elements and therefore should be purified with Barth’s antidote. This was necessary to bring the Christian faith back to its original message of uprising against structures of domination.107 With this Marxist design for religious renewal, the left-Barthians attempted to bring Barth’s heritage forward in new situations and therewith positioned themselves in the Barthian tradition. Meanwhile, the attitude of the Catholics in the CfS-movement towards their Catholic tradition and theological heritage was slightly different.
106 Dick Boer, "Karl Barth en Christenen voor het Socialisme: Tambach," Opstand 6, no. 1 (1979); Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," 72-73; Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen, 14, 21, 312; W. ten Boom, "De DDR als gelijkenis van het Koninkrijk Gods: De aktualiteit van Karl Barth's visie op de DDR," Opstand 15, no. 1 (1988). 107 Salemink, "Prophet in a Secular World: Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen 1918-1993," 207; Dick Boer, "Weerzien met een erflater: Friedrich Engels en het "oorspronkelijk christendom"," Opstand 16, no. 1 (1989). Though left-Barthians like Dick Boer and Rinse Reeling Brouwer did not fully agree with Van Leeuwen’s materialization of religion, they both used Van Leeuwen as an important conversation partner in their dissertations: "Een fantastisch verhaal: Theologie en ideologische strijd" (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1988), 8-9, 17; Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen.
38 God as the ‘Absolute New’
Whilst the memory of Barth and his theological fight against National-Socialism was preserved in the vivid debate on his theology, the memory of leading Catholic theologians and intellectuals of the interwar-period and the War Resistance slowly faded away in the 1960s. This Catholic amnesia was strikingly depicted by the Catholic priest Han Fortmann, who wrote an In Memoriam for the theologian Romano Guardini:
‘That is what Romano Guardini wrote in a book Von Geist der Liturge, which (…) many times has been reprinted and translated (…), has been read from cover to cover and discussed in monasteries and youth groups, - until the big church and theological revolution started, which, at least in the Netherlands, almost immediately took away his big audience. His death would have caused a bigger shock in Christian circles, if Guardini had died ten years earlier. Now, a single newspaper came with a short biography and that was it.’108
In his book on progressive Catholicism in the long 1960s, Gerd-Rainer Horn gave another example of the decreasing popularity of Catholic ‘war heroes’; in this case Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. In the early 1960s, Catholic base communities were still named after the French intellectuals, but only a few years the popular names had turned into ‘Camillo Torres, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Don Milani’.109 Though you could easily explain this as evidence for the thesis that Catholics replaced God for Marx, this again would be a simplification. It would mean that theology had been totally replaced by Marxism, which was not the case. Yet, it does indicate that the Catholic philosophy and theology of Maritain and Mounier were overdue. For a religious renewal to overcome this dead end, progressive theologians thought of a possible impetus from Marxism. A new direction for Catholic theology was not yet crystallized, when the CfS- movement appeared in 1974. In 1971, the Catholic theologian Ted Schoof wrote a survey on the developments in Catholic theology for the Protestant readers of the progressive magazine Wending. Schoof tried to sketch some new tendencies in Catholic theology, but could not predict which direction it would actually be going. He was certain about only
108 H.M.M. Fortmann, "Romano Guardini: Thesaurier van Europa," Wending 23 (1969). 109 Horn, The Spirit of Vatican II: Western European Left Catholicism in the Long Sixties, 1959-1980, 119.
39 one thing: ‘the old unity of uniform practices and clear-cut truths of faith seems to have been dismantled permanently’.110 With this statement, Schoof referred to the role neo- Thomism in the Catholic Church until Vatican II. Neo-Thomism was a philosophical and theological movement in the spirit of the medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas of Aquinas, which tried to reconcile reason and faith. It came up in the nineteenth century in reaction to modernity. New insights in both science and politics increased the pressure on the traditional position of the Church as guardian of truth, when truth appeared to be a fluid concept. The thinking of Thomas of Aquinas resolved this tension. Though Thomas affirmed that there was an eternal truth which God had created in this world, he also recognized that people could reach this truth through reason and logic. Therewith neo-Thomism tried to integrate the sciences in a Catholic worldview, but still resorted this Catholic worldview under the superior authority of the Church. On its turn, the Church in the form of the papacy promoted neo- Thomism as its official teaching from the late nineteenth century onwards.111 As neo-Thomism became a fundamental part of Catholic education, the neo- Thomist way of thinking penetrated almost every field in which Catholic intellectuals were active. In the political field, the Catholic unity around the neo-Thomist philosophic system was translated into a Social Doctrine of the Church. The encyclicals in which this Social Doctrine of the Church was enclosed rested upon the neo-Thomist notion of the harmonious order in nature. Because God had created a natural order in the world, this natural order had to be a guideline for the political order. This emphasis on natural order, marked the importance of communities like the family in the Social Doctrine. God had created the human as a communal being, so politics had to empower and facilitate the communities to reach a harmonious society. Political concepts like corporatism and subsidiarity corresponded with this idea of a harmonious society. As a result, Catholic politicians and political leaders propagated these concepts in their political programs.112 When Schoof used the term ‘crisis’ to describe the situation in the Catholic Church and its theology, he referred to a large extent to the crisis in neo-Thomism. The ‘unusual fierce confrontation’ of Vatican II had made clear that the ‘traditional and rigid frames’
110 T.M. Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk : op zoek naar een nieuwe koers," Wending 25 (1970): 426. 111 Schelkens, Dick, and Mettepenningen, Aggiornamento?: Catholicism from Gregory XVI to Benedict XVI, 70- 71; R. S. Zwart, "'Gods wil in Nederland': Christelijke ideologieë n en de vorming van het CDA (1880-1980)" (Kok, 1996), 25-28. 112 "'Gods wil in Nederland': Christelijke ideologieë n en de vorming van het CDA (1880-1980)," 28-32.
40 were permanently breached. It had resulted in a ‘dizzy feeling of freedom’.113 This was a clear indication that the once binding neo-Thomist fundament no longer fulfilled its unifying role in Catholic theology. The ‘nouvelle theólogie’ which replaced neo-Thomism as a dominant theological paradigm was rather a generic term, than an alternative ideology with the same pretentions as neo-Thomism. The Catholic Church not only left neo-Thomism in its theology. Also the Catholic unity in politics rooted in neo-Thomism was no longer guaranteed. Both authoritarian rulers like Franco and principal democrats like Maritain justified their political ideas with concepts related to neo-Thomism, which created ambiguity.114 The association between neo-Thomism and authoritarian regimes like those of Franco (Spain) and Salazar (Portugal) nourished aversion among progressive Catholics against politics based on neo-Thomist concepts like order, corporatism and solidarism. Since the regimes in Portugal and Spain had survived the War, these regimes had become the most visible example of a political system inspired by neo-Thomist concepts. Therewith they kept the memory of corporatism and fascism supported by natural order alive. The Catholics in the CfS-movement were well aware of the neo-Thomist legitimation of fascism with an appeal to natural order. Therefore, the historical record of the neo- Thomist tradition contrasted highly with the historical record of the Barthian tradition, which had its credentials in the fight against natural theology and fascism. When a left- Barthian from the Dutch CfS-movement came across a member of the Italian CfS- movement who claimed to be a Thomist Marxist, he was utterly surprised by the possibility of this combination.115 Unlike the left-Barthians and their reinterpretation of the Barthian tradition, the Catholics in the CfS-movement did not feel like continuing or reinterpreting the neo- Thomist tradition. Yet, this rejection of the neo-Thomism did not exclude them from the bigger Catholic tradition, to which they still had to relate. In this Catholic tradition, the theologians experienced the ‘dizzy feeling of freedom’ which left enough room to integrate the Marxist perspective in different ways. Roughly, there were two distinctive movements
113 Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk : op zoek naar een nieuwe koers," 421. 114 James Chappel, Catholic modern: The challenge of totalitarianism and the remaking of the Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 111-14. 115 Catholic modern: The challenge of totalitarianism and the remaking of the Church, 146-47; Salemink, Teksten Godsdienstkritiek II: Christen-socialisten in Crisistijd 1903-1941, 13-17, 20; R. Reeling Brouwer, "De vraag van Waldenzen aan hun katholieke broeders onder de radikaliserende christenen," Opstand 4, no. 3/4 (1977): 93-97; Latré , Strijd & inkeer: De kerk- en maatschappijkritische beweging in Vlaanderen, 1958-1990, 231-32; P. Baars, "Armoede van de christelijke politiek," Opstand 8, no. 3 (1981).
41 in the Catholic theology which manifested themselves in the CfS-movement: the political theology of Johann Baptist Metz (1928) and the experiential theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009). In the absence of a preceding theological structure which provided clear starting points, these movements took different points of view. Metz was oriented towards historical structures and communities, whereas Schillebeeckx wanted to start theology with the individual human experience.116 The Dutch followers of Metz wanted to confront the Catholic Church with its history through a Marxist analysis. The earlier-mentioned Tegenspraak-group was the most prominent example of this movement, because quite a few of them had followed courses of Metz in Münster. With their negative appreciation of Vatican II and aggiornamento as an adaptation to a dominant late-capitalist and bourgeois culture, they defended a radical opinion. They criticized religion and the ideology of the church as a continuation or even a divinization of nature, people and religious powers. Therewith they were on the same line as the left-Barthians. However, these suspicions against the modernizing and liberalizing tendencies in the Church among followers of Metz were also fed by the Neo-Marxist philosophy of Frankfurter Schüle philosophers like Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. This intellectual inspiration in Neo-Marxism enabled the group to make structural analyses of power and authority in the church, but what were these analyses used for?117 With their re-reading of the history of the Church, they tried to create a history that could bear the eschatological mission of the church; a construction of the past in service of the future. In an article, the Dutch historian Marit Monteiro has studied a group of radical Dominicans in the Netherlands called the Lorscheid-movement, which stood in the tradition of Metz and had much overlap with Tegenspraak. Monteiro mentions the appropriation of marginalized figures and expropriation of old structures as means to come to terms with Church history. In the CfS-movement, dissident Catholic socialists like Jan van den Brink or Johannes Veraart were at some point appropriated. Nevertheless, it did not become a frequent CfS-practice. Partially because there were simply not that much well-known dissident Catholic socialists in Dutch history, but also because the left- Barthians had some theological reserves against this creating of an alternative church
116 Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk : op zoek naar een nieuwe koers." 117 Kollektief Tegenspraak, "Het aggiornamento verslindt zijn kinderen."; "Aggiornamento: Van emancipatie naar integratie."; Haan, Rijpert, and Boer, Een wereld zonder tegenspraak?: 'Linkse' theologen na de teloorgang van het socialisme, 51.
42 history. It could give the impression of identification of God in history outside revelation in Christ.118 Because the international CfS-movement was predominantly Catholic, the Catholic theologians in the CfS-movement could probably take more advance of the international network of CfS for their theological orientation than the left-Barthians. The theology and church analysis of Metz had a strong representative in the CfS-movement in the person of Giulio Girardi. The Italian Salesian priest had participated in the Vatican II working group on the dialogue between Christianity and Atheism and Marxism, but had been suspended and defrocked when he radicalized in the direction of Marixsm. Despite of Girardi’s big influence in the Flemish CfS-movement, the Dutch CfS-movement was rather critical of his work.119 The international compass of the Catholics in Dutch CfS-movement was more set at liberation theology which took the human experience as a starting point for theology. This had probably to do with the influence of Schillebeeckx, who was a professor in theology at the Catholic university that was a bulwark of the Catholic CfS-faction: Nijmegen. Schillebeeckx was deeply stricken by the sense of crisis in Catholic theology in the 1960s. It would permanently affect his way of theologizing, as he turned away from the Thomist systematics with which he had made significant contributions to the interventions of the Dutch episcopate at Vatican II. In the wake of the Council however, he started to doubt about his methods. Searching for the relevance of theology in the fast changing world, he wanted theology to connect with the human experience. As a theologian, he was very much aware of the world around him. It was the main reason why historical trends like secularization and the protests of the late 1960s were reflected in his theological works.120 In his article ‘Het nieuwe Godsbeeld, secularisatie en politiek’ (‘The new image of God, secularization and politics’) Schillebeeckx was as bold to state that the old image of
118 Salemink, Teksten Godsdienstkritiek II: Christen-socialisten in Crisistijd 1903-1941, 21-22, 53-55; Monteiro, "The Religious Radicals of ’68," 115-17, 26; T. Salemink, "Een katholieke anti-fascist: Joannes Veraart 1886-1955," Opstand 16, no. 4 (1989). 119 F. van den Oudenrijn, "Boekbespreking "Kristenen voor het Socialisme: Waarom? Waartoe?"," Opstand 4, no. 6 (1977); G. Girardi, Kristenen voor het Socialisme: Waarom? Waartoe? (Leuven: Kritak, 1977); Jacopo Cellini, Universalism and liberation: Italian Catholic culture and the idea of international community, 1963- 1978 (Leuven: Leuven UP, 2017), 174; Latré , Strijd & inkeer: De kerk- en maatschappijkritische beweging in Vlaanderen, 1958-1990, 231-32. 120 Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk : op zoek naar een nieuwe koers," 431-36; Christiane Alpers, A politics of grace: Universal redemption for political theology in a post-Christendom context, T & T Clark studies in Edward Schillebeeckx (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
43
God could not survive in the new world. This willingness to innovate in the image of God, was related to what Schoof called a ‘Copernican revolution from the theory to the praxis’.121 For the modern people, the old image of God did no longer fit in their human self-understanding. Since the human self-understanding was built and shaped in the praxis, an image of God that wanted to be relevant had to make sense in this praxis. Schillebeeckx elaborated on the changes in the praxis of modern humans in the 1960s; whereas humanity was traditionally directed towards the past, recent developments showed a primacy of the future. Now humans in their acts were predominantly aimed at the future, theologians had to understand God on this horizon as well.122 When Schillebeeckx described God as ‘the Absolute New’ he did not only invented a new image of God for the religious people. At the same time, he laid the historical burden of the Church down. The theology of Schillebeeckx was less inclined to interpret the history of the Church like Metz and his followers did. Instead of Metz’s staring into the past, Schillebeeckx seemed to turn his back to the past. This indifference with regard to the past was due to the hermeneutical focus of his theology. Eventually, Schillebeeckx did not want to let his theology speak in relation to earlier theologians, but in relation to a human experience that is aimed at the future. This implied that he did not want to speak of God in old terms that were meaningless to modern people without faith. To overcome this problem, he tried to bridge the distance between the people and God as the ‘Absolute Other’. 123 Schillebeeckx thought that a question which was rooted in the human experience could not be answered plainly with an answer directly from revelation. As question and answer were in conversation with each other, they could not be from different categories: revelation and experience. A human question had to be replied with a human answer. However, this answer should be rooted in the humanum: ‘the resistance against the threats of humanity’. Correlation could only exist between the humanum and God, so Schillebeeckx only wanted to let God speak in the humanum.124 These were all important theological concerns for the Catholic theologians who studied in Nijmegen, but what could
121 Schoof, "Theologie in de katholieke kerk : op zoek naar een nieuwe koers." 122 E. Schillebeeckx, "Het nieuwe Godsbeeld, secularisatie en politiek," Tijdschrift voor Theologie 8, no. 1 (1968): 45-57; "Christelijk antwoord op een menselijke vraag? De oecumenische betekenis van de 'correlatiemethode'," Tijdschrift voor Theologie 10, no. 1 (1970): 1-10. 123 "Het nieuwe Godsbeeld, secularisatie en politiek," 45-57; "Christelijk antwoord op een menselijke vraag? De oecumenische betekenis van de 'correlatiemethode'," 1-10. 124 "Christelijk antwoord op een menselijke vraag? De oecumenische betekenis van de 'correlatiemethode'," 11-21.
44 be the role of Marxism in these? As the humanum was quite an open-ended concept and its relations to the human experience could be at some point unclear, Marxism could help to make sense of these. This made the hermeneutical circle of Schillebeeckx fertile soil for liberation theology. For them, theory came in the second place as the ‘systematic reflection on practice’.125 According to liberation theologians, the human experience had to be defined with the help of class consciousness. Only then, the church could give its absolute preference to the poor and work for a more just world. For this reason, Marxism was employed:
‘Marxism is for the liberation theologians not a new religion, nor an all- encompassing philosophy, which once again would be imported from Europe. What it is, is a tool, a necessary instrument that has to be perfected from a scientific reflection on new struggle experiences.’126
Due to the Catholic dominance in the international CfS-network, the liberation theology was the line through which most international stories and articles reached the columns of CfS-magazine Opstand. Opstand reported for example on the Nicaraguan revolution and the Salvadoran Civil War.127 Taking the international CfS-movement into account, it is not surprising that liberation theology was widely covered in the magazine of the Dutch CfS. However, it seems less obvious that all members of the Dutch CfS-movement with their varying theological orientations were equally enthusiastic about this.
The Barth Controversy
The different theological orientations in the CfS-movement could develop quite autonomously, as most CfS-divisions in different cities had a predominantly Catholic or Protestant character. As long as both groups would respect the programmatic principles, there was no reason for tensions. However, some dissonance in this theological coexistence occurred, when one group felt overshadowed by the others. Some Catholics had the feeling that they were an unvocal minority within the CfS-movement. This feeling
125 J. Debroux, "Vanuit een partijdige keuze," Opstand 12, no. 1 (1985): 19. 126 "Vanuit een partijdige keuze," 19. 127 "De christenen in El Salvador," Opstand 8, no. 3 (1981); E. Cardenal, "Revolutie is liefde," Opstand 7, no. 6 (1980); Benediktusgroep Nijmegen, "Nicaragua nu," Opstand 9, no. 2 (1982).
45 was particularly present in the Catholic CfS-division in Nijmegen. As an exception, they had negotiated with the steering group that they did not have to follow the national training program of the movement. This somewhat isolated position of the Nijmegen group surfaced in an article written by three members of the Nijmegen group that blamed the left-Barthians for imposing the rigidity of their theological tradition.128 Their objections against the theology of the Left-Barthians were not superficial, but hurt the Left-Barthian interpretation of the dialectical theology in the heart: both its systematic coherence and its relation to the socialist movement. The Catholic theologians disapproved the distance Barth had created between the human and the divine. This absolute heteronomy took away the rational grounds on which humans could act, leaving only ‘anti-rational fideism’. Following this line, they criticized Barth’s image of God as a ‘Ruler-God, who proceeds ukases’ and ‘denies the religious mediation through reason and experience’.129 Besides, they stressed Barth’s negative position with regard to politics, substantiated in his criticism of fascism and Nazism. Based on this, they doubted whether Barth’s theology could illuminate his positive choice for socialism.130 Last but not least, they argued that Barth’s distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ was not in accordance with the Marxist criticism of religion. Quite the opposite, it would turn the faith into a ‘storm-free zone’ on which the Marxist criticism of religion could have no effect.131 Though the article did not immediately evoke a debate within the movement, the theological dividing lines in the article kept resonating every time the distinction between Catholics and Protestants was brought up in Opstand. The contrast between a theology that identified God in the experience and one that saw Gods revelation exclusively ‘Senkrecht von Oben’, had practical implications as well. Catholics complained there was no room for spirituality in the CfS-movement due to the ‘steepness’ of Barth’s theology, which strongly separated the human experience from divine revelation.132 Catholics were not the only group who had troubles with Barth’s suspicion against experience. Feminist theologians and theologians who were active in the LGBT- emancipation, what they called ‘flikkerstrijd’ (‘fag-struggle’), wanted to incorporate their
128 Bruggen, "De internationale beweging "christenen voor het socialisme": Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland," 91; T. Beemer, L. Oosterveen, and T. de Wit, "Karl Barth als hoftheoloog van CvS- Nederland?," Opstand 7, no. 1 (1980): 10. 129 "Karl Barth als hoftheoloog van CvS-Nederland?," 13. 130 "Karl Barth als hoftheoloog van CvS-Nederland?," 10-11. 131 "Karl Barth als hoftheoloog van CvS-Nederland?," 12. 132 H. van den Bosch, "Spiritualiteitsangst," Opstand 11, no. 2 (1984); W. van der Meiden and R. Maaswinkel, "CvS en theologie: Het geding om ervaring," Opstand 11, no. 4 (1984).
46 experience of suppression and struggle into their theology. They could find themselves in the theological position of liberation theologians who claimed that alliances between social movements and the Word of God were possible. According to them, ‘God had to make dirty hands’. In the 1980s, this feminist theology and theology concerned with LGBT-emancipation became an important pillar in the CfS-movement.133 The interaction between the different theological traditions within the CfS was not always frictional. Though members of the CfS-movement were not afraid of polemical and polarized debates, not every theological difference was poked up to a conflict or a fight. Sometimes, theologians used the insights of other theological traditions to sharpen their own theology, because the confrontation with other theological traditions could help to discover limits and deficits. This could result in a learning process and hybridization of theological traditions. The Protestant theologian Krijn Strijd was an example of this learning process within the CfS-movement, as he was inspired by the Marxist reality- analysis of liberation theology. This learning process could also work the other way around. The Protestant theologian Arend van Leeuwen worked as a professor at the Catholic university in Nijmegen, where he introduced Barth to Catholic students.134 The interaction within the CfS-movement did not always lead to a hybridization of theological traditions. The theology of left-Barthians like Rinse Reeling Brouwer and Dick Boer actually developed in another direction. In the late 1980s, they both finished a dissertation on the left-Barthian interpretation of Barth’s theology. At that time, they left the premises that there was a compulsory bond between Barth’s theology and socialism. They rather spoke about the possibility of a bond and seemed to admit that their political interpretation went beyond Barth. When both were interviewed in 1994 on the disappearance of the real existing socialism and the consequences for their theology, they said that it had made their theology even more ‘steep’. It is impossible to reconstruct whether or to what extent this turn to a more steep theology was affected by the criticism of Catholics on Barth. However, it is a very clear indication that their interaction with Catholics in the CfS-movement did not lead to a process of ‘Catholization’ or a theology more rooted in nature and experience.135
133 L. Oosterveen, "Het verlangen voorbij," Opstand 11, no. 1 (1984). 134 "Het verlangen voorbij."; A. Polhuis, "In memoriam: Krijn Strijd," Opstand 10, no. 6 (1983); Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," 67-68. 135 Haan, Rijpert, and Boer, Een wereld zonder tegenspraak?: 'Linkse' theologen na de teloorgang van het socialisme, 20-21, 45; Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth
47 A statement such as ‘theology should be liberated from bourgeois thinking’ seemed straightforward, but a rich and sometimes complicating theological diversity was hidden behind it. With this theological diversity it is evident that there was no such thing as ‘Marxist theology’, let alone an official CfS-theology. Though the theologians in the CfS- movement had their commitment to the socialist movement in common, their theologies could differ on many axes. First, there was the distinction between natural and dialectic theology. This was not only a demarcation within the CfS-movement, but in theology in general. In many discussions the positions could be deduced to this distinction. Second, theologians dealt differently with the past. Whilst Schillebeeckx had no particular interest for the religious past or the tragedy of World War II, left-Barthians and followers of Metz tried to draw lines of continuity into the past. Still, the left-Barthians did not want to go as far to identify God in the past like the followers of Metz seemed to do. Last, there was no agreement on how to integrate Marxism or the Marxist criticism of religion into the theology. Liberation theologians used Marxism as the instrument for analysis of reality, without accepting it as an all-encompassing philosophy that subordinates the phenomenon religion to its logic. Meanwhile, the left-Barthians considered the Marxist criticism of religion as a necessary precondition for theology. The radical followers of Metz even subjected the recent history of the Catholic Church to Marxist logic. Altogether, the common ground in theology within the CfS-movemen was limited. As we saw in the first chapter, this did not count for the widespread idea that theology was useless without action. Even the left-Barthians who had suspicions against the experience as a source for theology, assumed the interaction between praxis and doxis as a constituting part of theology. Thanks to this decisive position of the praxis in all theological traditions in the CfS-movement, the praxis created a sense of unity that disguised dogmatic discord. The next chapter therefore looks how this relation between theology and praxis worked out in the political context.
vergelijkenderwijs gelezen; Boer, "Een fantastisch verhaal: Theologie en ideologische strijd."; A. Scheers, "Beyond Karl Barth?," Opstand 14, no. 1 (1987).
48 4. Politics as Praxis
The ‘praxis’ played a crucial role in the theology of the CfS-movement. This was evident in the case of Catholics who followed the theology of Schillebeeckx, but counts for the Barthians as well. Even though the left-Barthians and Catholics inspired by Schillebeeckx used ‘praxis’ differently in their theology, both agreed that theology could only make sense in relation to this praxis. For the Barthians in the CfS-movement, with their political- theoretical interpretation of ‘praxis’, this link between the praxis and theology also seemed to work the other way around. Their essential link between praxis and theology combined with a political-theoretical interpretation of praxis, resulted in a positive relation between the theology and politics.136 The supposed positive relation between Barth’s theology and politics highly frustrated a theologian like Harry Kuitert. According to Kuitert, there were no reasons to deduce ‘political and social directives’ from Barth’s theology.137 This discussion between theologians like Kuitert and the CfS-movement was not only a theoretical affair. Kuitert knew about the theological and political ideas within the CfS-movement, because the CfS- movement actively engaged in the political debate. Because many CfS-members were convinced of the positive relation between theology and politics, they were not afraid of theological interventions in the political debate if this would challenge misunderstood theology. This chapter looks at some of these theological interventions in the political debate, to explore the practical use of theology for politics.
Heresy called Christian-democracy
The CfS-movement was principally against becoming a new political party itself. Consequently, CfS-members were present in different political parties of the left: the communist CPN, the pacifist-socialist PSP, the radical-Christian PPR and the social democrat PvdA.138 Still, something bound them together politically: an almost dogmatic disapproval of Christian-democracy. Dogmatic was in this context not proverbial. The Christians for Socialism often criticized the Christian-democrats with the help of theology.
136 Zuurmond, "Christenen voor het Socialisme en de theologie."; Marquardt, Barth is socialist, 38, 18. 137 H. Kuitert, Alles is politiek maar politiek is niet alles: Een theologische perspectief op geloof en politiek (Baarn: Ten Have, 1985), 31-32, 112. 138 Salemink, "Meervoudige modernisering: Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig," 77.
49 In a time when the Christian voices in Dutch politics seemed to converge, they formulated an alternative political view for Christians. When the three Christian political parties in the Netherlands merged into the new Christen-Democratisch Appèl (Christian Democratic Appeal: CDA) in 1980, this created one big Christian-democratic party with much power. It was not self-evident, that this new party would be powerful. One of the reasons the parties had decided to merge, was a series of electoral defeats in the elections in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. These electoral losses were an indication that the binding relation between confession and politics was evaporating. Traditionally, there had been a strong discipline in the Catholic community and the community of the RCN to vote for respectively the Katholieke Volkspartij (Catholic People’s Party; KVP) and the Antirevolutionaire Partij (Antirevolutionary Party; ARP). Though the Christelijk-Historische Unie (Christian Historical Union; CHU) was less aligned to a specific church, this party had most of its voters in the DRC. Many people expected the electoral downward trend of the Christian parties to continue, even after the creation of the CDA. Nonetheless, the CDA managed to consolidate.139 The challenge for the CDA was to find a tone which would made it possible to unite the three so-called ‘blood groups’ around one program. This implied a reflection on the relation between religion and politics, because the newly-formed party found different opinions on this topic among its members. On the one hand, there were members like Dick de Zeeuw, mostly coming from the Catholic party, who wanted to abandon any references to Christianity and continue as an open party. On the other hand, there were strict Protestants who demanded a Gospel-based program. This discussion on the Christian identity of the new party became known as the Grondslagen-discussie (foundations discussion), and involved people from the three biggest churches.140 Due to this foundations discussion, the meaning of ‘Christian politics’ stood in the spotlight of the Dutch media. In this context of very explicit attention for the Christian inspiration of the CDA, the CfS-movement could easily bring forward their opinion on Christian politics. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the CfS-movement frequently addressed what they called the ‘CDA-theology’ in Opstand. This was not a term that came from the CDA
139 H. Ten Napel, ""Een eigen weg": De totstandkoming van het CDA (1952-1980)" (Leiden University, 1992), 329-48. 140 ""Een eigen weg": De totstandkoming van het CDA (1952-1980)," 329-48.
50 itself. The party did not have an official theology, nor official theologians. It were the CfS- members themselves who created this notion of a CDA-theology, based on CDA-politicians and theologians and their statements on Christian inspiration.141 With this presentation of the CDA-ideology as a theology, they wanted to demonstrate that the CDA-ideology was theologically thoughtless. To do this, the CfS-movement mobilized Barth’s criticism against Christian politics:
‘Under which right, does the CDA pretentiously appropriate a position and identity in which ‘Christian action coincides with our action’? Only the Christ can act ‘Christian’ (i.e. Messianic), we understood from the Bible, and He offers his identity to His people.’142
According to the CfS-movement, the CDA used a framework to read the Bible that was biased by bourgeois ideology when they tried to translate the Bible into politically relevant values. The CfS-movement therefore wanted to unveil faults and flaws in the way the CDA utilized the Bible. In their exegesis of programs of Christian-democrat parties, the CfS-members also found heretic phrases which they associated with Manicheanism and Pelagianism. These theological vivisections on the CDA made clear that in the eyes of the CfS-movement, the Christian politics of the CDA had few if anything to do with Christ.143 Theological arguments were not the only equipment of the CfS-movement in the fight against Christian-democracy. Another aspect that was repeatedly emphasized, were the abuses of power by Christian-democrat politicians. Whereas both Catholics and Protestants participated in the theological discussion with Christian-democracy, it is remarkable that these complaints about the power abuses of Christian-democrat politicians predominantly came from Catholics. One of these complaints dealt with impure ‘throne-altar relations’ between Catholic politicians and church leaders, for example in the case of the Bavarian politician Franz-Josef Strauss who apparently had warned for the dangers of Latin-American ‘revolution-theology’ in a private audience with
141 L. Oosterveen, A. Smits, and T. de Wit, "Het ideologisch fundament van het CDA wankelt," Opstand 8, no. 4 (1981); "Hoera voor de hogere dingen: Het CDA en de theologie," Opstand 4, no. 1 (1977); Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 80. 142 "Hoera voor de hogere dingen: Het CDA en de theologie," 1. 143 "Hoera voor de hogere dingen: Het CDA en de theologie," 4.
51 Pope John Paul II.144 Another complaint, which applied to the Netherlands, concerned the clientelism among Catholic politicians in the south:
‘The big frustration of the Brabantian, the left Brabantian, is the CDA! It is just terrible. The CDA still has much power in Brabant. (…) Within the CDA, the personal and the political always go hand in hand. Do you criticize the policy of an alderman, then he will feel personally hurt and react upon that.’145
In the 1980s, the attention for the CDA in Opstand gradually decreased. The foundations discussion in the CDA faded away, so there was less debate about a Christian identity which could feed suspicions against a CDA-theology. Within the CfS, this development fell together with the increasing importance of emancipatory theologies concerning feminism and LGBT. When representatives of these movements discussed the CDA, they were less inclined to attack the CDA on theological grounds. Instead, they complained about the ‘human ideal’ that was reflected in the programs of the CDA, especially with regard to family issues. Though the CfS-movement wanted to contest CDA’s principle that the ‘family is the cornerstone of society’, God and theology were less prominent in their arguments.146
Theological Pluralism in the Popular Front
The CfS-movement criticized the Christian-democracy with the help of a negative theology, but what positive story did the Christians for Socialism put in place of it? Though this had to be socialism, this still could vary from Moscow-oriented communism to pacific- socialism when we take the political alignment of CfS-members as point of view. Political diversity with regard to party-membership was another dividing force, next to the theological diversity we already saw in the previous chapter. This two-fronted theological-political pluralism could be a big obstacle to the unity in the movement. However, the members in the CfS-movement were not that keen to let these differences affront the unity in the movement. As Rinse Reeling Brouwer explained it:
144 A. Westerhout, "Voortgezette kettervervolging in de rooms-katholieke kerk," Opstand 7, no. 1 (1980): 4. 145 P. Baars, "De grote frustratie van de Brabander is het CDA," Opstand 9, no. 1 (1982): 20. 146 F.J. Hirs, "Het verbond en de familiejuwelen: Een bespreking van het CDA - Rapport "[+]-Samen"," Opstand 13, no. 4 (1986); M. Bakema, "Het belang van het gezin," Opstand 15, no. 6 (1988).
52 ‘Only for that reason, it cannot be the case, that theological disputes are extensively repeated within the ranks of the labor movement. Religious disagreements have ruined the desired unity of the left far too often.’147
With this statement, Reeling Brouwer clearly set out a programmatic principle of the movement. The desire of the Christians for Socialism was nothing less than the creation of a Popular Front: a coalition of all left political parties to break the power of the Christian-democrats as the inevitable coalition partner in the Dutch political landscape. The CfS-movement saw successful examples of such a Popular Front in countries like France, Italy and Portugal.148 As the promotion of unity on the left became one of the core principles of the CfS- movement, they attacked leftist people and parties who were insufficiently cooperative to this purpose in their eyes. For example, social democrats and reformist socialists had to abandon their anti-communism in order to reach unity on the left. They held the anti- communist socialists responsible for the enduring power of the right-wing. This anti- communism among some social democrats and reformist socialists was also an important reason why the CfS-movement did not want to be identified with the Christians who had joined the social-democrat party PvdA short after the Second World War. Protestant clergymen like Jan Buskes and Willem Banning who had opted for a ‘breakthrough’ of traditional confessional parties with their membership of the social democrat party, still rejected communism on a moral basis. This went straight against the commitment of the CfS-movement.149 This political objection was not the only objection that the Christians for Socialism found against people like Willem Banning, who was one of the main founders of the PvdA. As Banning was a liberal-protestant minister who was in favor of religious-socialism, the CfS-movement had difficulties with his theological positions. Therefore the CfS-movement had a complicated relationship with groups of leftist Christians like the Woodbrokers Association who belonged to Banning’s tradition of religious-socialism. According to
147 Reeling Brouwer, "De vraag van Waldenzen aan hun katholieke broeders onder de radikaliserende christenen," 89. 148 "Kabinetskrisis bewijst noodzaak Linkse Eenheid," Opstand 4, no. 1 (1977). 149 T. Witvliet, R. Zuurmond, and J. Buskes, "Een man op klompen in bedelaarslompen..." Opstand 4, no. 2 (1977); Dick Boer, "Het religieus-socialisme aanstekelijk en bedenkelijk voorbeeld," Opstand 6, no. 6 (1979): 14.
53 Reeling Brouwer, religious-socialists saw it as their Christian duty ‘to keep asking for the ethical motivation and human values behind the straight political decisions in the socialist movement, and to counter the materialistic tendencies that mute this motivation.’150 The Tambacher Rede (1919) of Karl Barth was an important source of inspiration for the campaign against these religious-socialists. In his speech ‘The Christian in society’ at the German town Tambach, Barth had accused the religious-socialists of giving unnecessary religious meaning to socialism. Instead of becoming Christians in society, these religious-socialists tried to be ‘Christ in society’:
‘Barth considers the Christian, the religious man, a social being just like any other. The Christian is not Christ! He is part of the capitalist reality, is bourgeois or petty bourgeois, maybe proletarian and for the most part this defines his conscience, his thoughts and his attitude. And the fact, that this conscience is ‘religious’, ‘Christian’, does not make him more free or independent than any other conscience.’151
With this statement, the Christians for Socialism protested against those religious- socialists who thought they were some steps ahead of atheist socialists. These religious- socialists who wanted to convert both Christians to socialism and socialists to Christianity, were fundamentally wrong in the eyes of the left-Barthians. This was also an important problem they saw with the earlier-mentioned ‘breakthrough’ Christians who had joined the PvdA. Inspired by the liberal theology, they had reduced socialism to religious-inspired ethics. As a consequence, these religious-socialists could not accept Marxism and the class struggle as a whole. The Christians for Socialism saw this modification of socialism into religious idealism without class struggle as a bourgeois infection of Marxism and therefore rejected it.152 The so-called Christian radicals from the PPR or the ARP who advocated a radical political translation of the Gospel, were met with similar reserves by the Barthian Christians for Socialism. These CfS-members were convinced that the Christian radicals, just like the religious-socialists, isolated themselves from the socialist movement by stressing the religious fundaments of their political choice. By illuminating their political
150 R. Reeling Brouwer, "Socialisme en religie," Opstand 7, no. 3 (1980). 151 Boer, "Karl Barth en Christenen voor het Socialisme: Tambach." 152 "Het religieus-socialisme aanstekelijk en bedenkelijk voorbeeld."
54 choice with faith, they drove a wedge between left people with and without faith. Again, this categorization within the socialist movement was to avoid for the CfS-movement. So in spite of the recognition by the Christians for Socialism that they had some political desires and ideas with these Christian radicals in common, the CfS-movement preferably saw these Christian radicals give up their own parties and organizations.153 It is remarkable that some CfS-members had aversion against the Christian- radicalism of a party like the PPR.154 We have seen that many Catholics within the CfS- movement were strongly influenced by Latin-American liberation theology. Because the PPR was mainly founded by progressive Catholics, this party had some strong ties with progressive Catholicism in Latin-America too.155 Though the PPR was therefore familiar with the liberation theology, the Catholics in the CfS-movement did not publicly defend this party when the party was criticized by left-Barthians. Possibly, the Catholic CfS- members could not identify themselves with the PPR’s reserves against Marxism and sympathized more with the uncompromised choice for Marxism of many left-Barthians. Above all, there was no urgent need to defend the PPR against theological assaults; eventually the commitment to the Popular Front was prevailing over the quest for theological correctness. With regard to their fellows on the political left, the attitude of the CfS-movement could be capricious. This was mainly due to the theological and political diversity within the movement. Even though there was a strong will to create a Popular Front and break the power of Christian-democracy, it could not prevent some Christians for Socialism to criticize other leftist Christians on theological grounds. Here, it is again important to distinguish between the left-Barthians and the other groups within the CfS-movement. It were the left-Barthians who linked their theology to clear political statements on specific parties. Just like Barth’s theology had been a weapon against the CDA, it could be a weapon against other Christians who misinterpreted the relationship between religion and politics. However, not all groups in the CfS-movement made use of these theological interventions against political parties.
153 "Karl Barth en Christenen voor het Socialisme: Tambach," 3; Reeling Brouwer, "Verslag van de Secretaris: Najaar 1973-zomer 1978," 95-97. 154 Boer, "Karl Barth en Christenen voor het Socialisme: Tambach," 3. 155 For example, the PPR politician Dolf Coppes had a strong reputation in supporting development aid and trade union initiatives in Latin-America.
55 The liberation theologians or feminist and LGBT-theologians who took experience as an important source for theology, did not give theological judgements on political parties like the PPR or political movements like religious-socialism. Instead, they used to compare the different left parties to see which party would best represent their particular interest. So, feminist theologians would look at the position of women in the programs of the political parties, whereas LGBT-theologians would judge the programs on LGBT- issues. Liberation-theologians could give a more systematic account of the social policies of the political parties based on their sense of structural or social sin. Still, this did not offer clear-cut condemnations of the role of religion in a specific party. With this interest- based political engagement, these groups in the CfS-movement did not differ clearly from other non-religious lobbying or interest groups.156 In spite of these differences in their esteem of leftist parties, left-Barthian and experiential theologians shared their worries about new developments in the political right-wing. Both groups strongly associated these new developments with fascism. According to the Christians for Socialism, this had to be another reason for the different groups on the left-wing to work together. Again, the question how to respond to this reemerging fascism divided the Christians for Socialism. At the same time, this disagreement was different from earlier disagreements for theology did not seem to play a big role in it anymore.
Godless Neo-fascism
When Reeling Brouwer published his dissertation on church dogmatics and marxist philiophy in 1988, he noticed that the role of theologians had changed over time: ‘The time that the great social disputes were battled as clashes of theologians seems long ago’.157 As Reeling Brouwer was a left-Barthian theologian, he probably referred to Karl Barth who treated his fight against fascism as a theological fight. However, the fact that theologians were less prominent opponents of fascism at the time of Reeling Brouwer did not mean that fascism was beaten. Quite the opposite, the Christians for Socialism had the feeling
156 "Links in de kerk over links in de politiek," Opstand 8, no. 3 (1981). 157 Reeling Brouwer, Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie: Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen, 15.
56 that some right-wing groups in the Dutch political landscape deployed a fascism which had not been seen since World War II.158 Especially the entrance of Hans Janmaat’s national-conservative Centrumpartij (Centre Party) in the Dutch parliament in 1982 was seen as an indication of an awakening neo-fascism. Janmaat was a teacher in ‘Civic eduation’, who tried to become politically active in the 1970s. He was active in commissions and working groups in the KVP between 1972 and 1979, but failed to acquire a political position. After this, his attempt to reach a political office in the DS’70, a conservative split from the social democrats, was neither successful. This was also due to a strong interest for population- and migration issues, which was not backed by both parties. Therefore, he joined in 1980 a recently founded anti-immigration party which was soon labeled as radical right or far-right: the Centre Party. Almost immediately, he became the most important man in this party and after his election in parliament the most prominent opponent of immigration in the Netherlands. With political statements like ‘full = full’ and ‘own people first’, Janmaat generated feelings of disgust among the Christians for Socialism who considered him a neo-fascist.159 Due to this assumed awakening neo-fascism on the one hand and sense of declining relevance of theologians on the other hand, the Christians for Socialism struggled with feelings of alienation. Harm Dane wrote about the society in the 1985:
‘The amount of Liberal Party-voters (VVD ed.) among high school students is rapidly increasing and the Centre Party attracts many young people too. And even outside the direct politics, you can see similar developments: the past 15 years, higher education has not been stripped and cut as it is now, but there is no sign of any student protest and the traditional student associations (corpora ed.) flourish as never before.’160
This ‘shift to the right’ (‘verrechtsing’ in Dutch) in society as a whole, posed the Christians for Socialism for the big question why this was actually happening.161 The discussion on
158 Vrouwengroep Christenen voor het Socialisme - Nederland, "Fascisme en seksisme: CvS-Nederland en de anti-fascistiese strijd," Opstand 10, no. 1 (1983); B. van den Berg and H. Malschaert, "Anti-fascistische strijd," Opstand 10, no. 1 (1983); J. van Beuzekom, "De centrumpartij moet verboden worden," Opstand 11, no. 4 (1984). 159 C. Hoetink, "Janmaat, Johannes Gerardus Hendrikus (1934-2002)," in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland (Amsterdam: Huygens ING, 2013). 160 H. Dane, "Blubbers & fatsoen: Over de moraal van de tegen-beweging," Opstand 12, no. 2 (1985): 5. 161 Berg and Malschaert, "Anti-fascistische strijd."
57 the Centre Party in Opstand shows that there were different explanations for the rise of far-right. The historical fascism clearly resonated in this discussion on the presumed neo- fascism of the Centre Party. In an article on the anti-fascist fight by the Women’s Group of the CfS-movement, they even stated that ‘historical experiences in the fight against the Hitler-regime are consciously utilized in the movement’.162 This became also clear in their analysis of the Centre Party, in which the two explanations of the success of the Centre Party coincided with analyses of fascism dating back to the inter war period. The first group argued that the success of the Centre Party was the result of the ‘doctrine or resentment’ (‘rancuneleer’ in Dutch) of the party. The Dutch intellectual Menno ter Braak, had presented his doctrine of resentment in an essay on fascism in 1934. It said that fascism exploited feelings of dissatisfaction among people who were ‘socially defenseless’. Fascism projected this feelings of dissatisfaction on enemies like the Jews or the immigrants of Turkish and Moroccan descent in the case of the Centre Party. However, the crux of fascism, and in extension the Centre Party, was therefore not only the ideology itself but also the weak social position of its adherents. The ideology of fascism troubled the minds of socially weak people with imaginary enemies in order to make them vote against their socio-economic interests. If the state had taken good care of its citizens, the citizens would be less receptive to this hostility. So, this explanation was predominantly socio-economic.163 The other group saw in (neo-)fascism an extreme blowup of ordinary or bourgeois culture, because they believed that ‘emerging fascism connected to existing images, ideas and uses’.164 In 1984, the Christians for Socialism had created a ‘training folder’ on fascism for educational purposes, in which this perspective was dominant:
‘Fascism is the normality – the things that are considered normal, healthy and descend thoughts and deeds – extremely articulated in times of crisis, organized and armed with weapons and armor.’165
162 Vrouwengroep Christenen voor het Socialisme - Nederland, "Fascisme en seksisme: CvS-Nederland en de anti-fascistiese strijd," 10. 163 B. van den Berg, "De opkomst van Janmaat en z'n rap," Opstand 9, no. 5 (1982); Berg and Malschaert, "Anti-fascistische strijd." 164 "Extreem en normaal," Opstand 12, no. 2 (1985): 4. 165 W. van der Meiden, "Een gewaagd fascisme gesprek," Opstand 12, no. 6 (1985): 18.
58 The Women’s Group of the CfS-movement claimed to have developed this concept of fascism, because they had sensed the magnification of the patriarchal relations in society by (neo-)fascist groups.166 This is interesting, because it appeared that these feminist theologians were not aware or did not want to be aware of the fact that Karl Barth had defended similar theses about fascism. With his natural theology as the fertile soil for fascism, Barth came close to the ideological interpretation of fascism as the extreme malformation of the normal. These different concepts of fascism also demanded different methods to fight it. For a large part, this thinking about possible solutions for the fascist problem took place in regionally organized anti-fascist committees. The discussion in these anti-fascist committees reflected the inner division in the anti-fascist bloc. Those who thought of the emerging fascism as a socio-economic problem, advocated an improvement of the living conditions in impoverished urban areas where many immigrants lived. This would prevent the original inhabitants of these areas from blaming the newcomers for their poverty. Others, with an ideological interpretation of fascism, preferred better education of citizens with more anti-racism programs in schools and anti-racism events in the poor urban areas. Another significant group even asked for a legal ban on the Centre Party as a possible solution to the problem.167 In this variety of concepts of fascism and possible methods to fight it, the absence of theology seemed most striking. Though the fascism of the 1930s seemed present in the ideas of the Christians for Socialism, they did no longer take the step to theologize this fascism or considered theology as an antidote against it. When the Christians for Socialism joined anti-fascist committees, there was few if any that distinguished them from non- religious anti-fascists. Even those Christians for Socialism who would see ‘fascism’ as some sort of pseudo-religion, abusing cultural or even theological concepts and ideas, were not convinced of the role of theology to combat it. Harm Dane noted about theology that:
166 Vrouwengroep Christenen voor het Socialisme - Nederland, "Fascisme en seksisme: CvS-Nederland en de anti-fascistiese strijd." 167 Berg and Malschaert, "Anti-fascistische strijd."
59 ‘the parenting rules, which are deduced from it, have liberated themselves from their theological background long since and therefore will continue to function, even when all theologians would agree that they rest upon wrong exegesis.’168
This resignation with regard to the role of theology in society corresponded with Reeling Brouwer’s observations about the position of a theologian in society. They reflected a deeper uncertainty about the future of society and the role of theology in it. In 1989, a whole issue of Opstand was devoted to fascism. Now, the vast majority of the articles took a historical perspective, while there were few signs of theological and political activism.169 The activist mentality which used to be common ground in the movement seemed to have been extinguished by doubt.
In spite of all theological and political diversity, there seemed to be two consequent political principles that kept the CfS-movement together: the aversion of the CDA and the efforts for a Popular Front. Translating the common anti-capitalist sentiment into practical politics, these principles aimed directly at the powerful position of Christian- democracy which would present itself as the Christian voice in Dutch politics. All wanted to break this monopolistic attitude of the CDA, also by promoting unity of the left. As long as these principles were respected, different theologians could formulate different kinds of political criticism based on either a Barthian or experiential theology. The theological side of this political criticism was slowly fading away, as the left- Barthian theology lost ground in the movement and the group of experiential theologians became less distinctive from secular activists. The strong beliefs about the relation between doxis and praxis, turning theology into activism, lost much of its unifying power in the movement. In the 1990s, not only the Berlin Wall had eroded, but also the common ground in the movement. This made it even more difficult to find immediate answers for the ‘shift to the right’ in society.
168 W. Veen, ""Op zoek naar de wortels van het kwaad": Over raakvlakken van theologie en fascisme," Opstand 12, no. 2 (1985): 11. 169 W. van der Meiden, "Van de redactie," Opstand 16, no. 4 (1989).
60 Conclusion
Confronted with the ‘shift to the right’ in the 1980s, the Christians for Socialism gave the impression of a disenchanted movement. This became even more evident in the earlier- mentioned book Een Wereld Zonder Tegenspraak, where the interviews with leftist theologians in 1992 were marked by a sphere of disillusion. At the same time, this disenchantment supposes there had been some sort of enchantment which had impassioned the Christians for Socialism for years. In his interview in the book, the church historian and former CfS-member Theo Salemink had some illustrative comments on this:
‘I have been raised and socialized in the sixties, the students movement in Nijmegen, where everything had to change, the Frankfurter Schüle (…) the occupations of the university, the idea – later the illusion – that you can change society at once. (…) Theologically you could call this the Kairos-moment, the hour of truth (…) the hour ‘U’, in which the revolution would start, or in older terms, the Kingdom of God on earth. The moment in which the working class or another suppressed class had the revolution within reach. I very strongly felt this emotion in the sixties. A delightful emotion, almost a bright flame which can bring a man or a movement to enormous energy.’170
Notwithstanding his acknowledgement that much turned out to be an illusion, Salemink clearly described the student protests in the 1960s as an almost religious experience. So, the protests did not only address the participating theologians on their political identity, but also on their religious identity. It would therefore be a big mistake to ignore the impact of the formative experience of the protests in the 1960s on young theologians. As such, it was a part of the common ground in the CfS-movement. This is also the reason why it is impossible to leave out the first chapter from this thesis. Skipping the period before the foundation of the CfS-movement, would make you wonder why these people with very different backgrounds and sometimes even conflicting theologies were together after all? Going back to the research question how the CfS-movement operationalized the different religious traditions for political use, it is important to keep this influence of the
170 Haan, Rijpert, and Boer, Een wereld zonder tegenspraak?: 'Linkse' theologen na de teloorgang van het socialisme, 51-52.
61 formative experiences in the 1960s in mind. When you compare the protest groups in the different churches in the 1960s, it becomes very clear that these young Christians preferred action over theoretical deliberations. This attitude was preserved within the CfS-movement, where they granted action and protest a key position as the final point of their theology. Another important aspect that can be traced back to formative experiences of the 1960s, was the willingness to welcome Marxism in theology. This did not mean the Christians for Socialism had a Marxist theology, or even a common method to combine Marxism with theology. While left-Barthians tried to catch up with the Marxist criticism of religion, liberation theologians were more interested in Marxism as an instrument to define the human experience. Rather than an elaborated Marxist theology, there was a shared belief that Marxism could help identifying the authentic message of the Gospel. Above all, the Christians for Socialism criticized the churches of their time with their preference for action and willingness to welcome Marxism. In fact, these two aspects of their theology can be read as a proposal for religious renewal in predominantly passive and conservative churches. The operationalization of religious traditions for political use was inherent to this religious renewal, promoting the preference for action and the relevance of Marxism. However, this is not a complete answer on the research question yet. This thesis should also clarify how it could be possible that there were different ways of involving Marxism into theology. Here, it helps to conceptualize the Marxist-Christian dialogue as something truly global and inter-confessional, for the Dutch CfS-members drew much inspiration from people and practices abroad. It is not exaggerated to say that transnational, and in some cases even inter- confessional, transfer was the most important lifeline for the CfS-movement. It started already with the sudden emergence of protest groups in the different Dutch churches in the late 1960s, inspired by each other and by the youth-group at the WCC-assembly in Uppsala in 1968. This was continued by founders of the Dutch CfS-movement who took over the ideological ground scheme of the CfS-movements in other countries. However, this transfer could also be on the level of individual theologians. This was the case with Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt who enflamed Protestant students with left-Barthian activism or the Tegenspraak-group which had followed courses of Johann-Baptist Metz in Münster. So, the Dutch Christians for Socialism had an extensive international outreach in the Christian-Marxist dialogue due to their theological diversity.
62 The unity of the movement in spite of all this theological diversity is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the CfS-movement. Though the confessional diversity caused some tensions from time to time, the movement remained a potpourri of theological orientations. Therefore the complaint of some Catholics in the CfS-movement that Barth was the ‘court theologian’ of the CfS-movement seemed a bit overdone, especially in comparison to foreign CfS-movements like the Italian where the theology of Giulio Girardi could be called dominant. In the end, the Dutch CfS-movement could host both theologians who proponed a transcendent God and theologians who proponed an immanent God: a very fundamental distinction in theology. The theologians among the Dutch Christians for Socialism could set these fundamental theological differences aside to achieve the higher political purpose; this attitude also defined their efforts for a Popular Front. Thanks to the strong commitment to the political goals of the movement, theological sensitivities could easily disappear into the background. This shows that the political operationalization of theology in the CfS-movement also implied a reassessment of the relative importance of the doxis in relation to the praxis. This transformation of theology from a predominantly dogmatic discipline into practical activism clearly reflects the preference for action as a theological axiom that dates back to the students protests. This again underlines the argument that these students protests should be seen as a formative experience, also religiously. Linking this transformation of theology to the students protests in the 1960s as a religious experience, has another big advantage; it helps explaining both the disintegration of the movement over time and the difficulties with passing on to younger generations. If the religious experience of the students protests was the enchantment that kept the people in the CfS-movement together, this enchantment would lose power over time as the distance to the ‘special moment’ would grow. Furthermore, the enchantment would only affect the people being part of this religious experience. For people who were born later, it could have been difficult to come into this theology which was so strongly related to an experience they had not been part of. This historical interpretation of the students protests as ‘religious experience’ also has its risks. The left-Barthians, who for a long time had been the most important group in the CfS-movement, resisted against the use of experience in theology. So, a historical interpretation that puts so much emphasis on the experience of protest as an axiom for further theology will probably meet resistance too. On the other hand, the fact that most
63 left-Barthian theologians over the years nuanced the inevitability of an association between Barth and socialism might support this historical interpretation. Future research based on interviews with living members would be able to figure out to what extent left- Barthians would go along with this interpretation. At least, the interpretation of the students protest as a ‘religious experience’ is an indication that the turmoil of 1960s affected theologians. Theologians like Edward Schillebeeckx or Michel de Certeau explicitly referred to this turmoil in their work, but it could be more implicit for the younger generation of theologians for whom there was almost no theology before this formative experience. Therefore, the relation between the protests in the 1960s and religion is still a promising field for further research; not only in the light of secularization, but also in the light of transformations in theology.
64 List of Abbreviations
ARP Antirevolutionaire Partij ATO Agogisch-Theologische Opleiding CDA Christen-Democratisch Appèl CfS Christenen voor het Socialisme CHU Christelijk-Historische Unie CPN Communistische Partij van Nederland DRC Nederlands-Hervormde Kerk DS’70 Democratisch Socialisten ‘70 GCM Algemene Kerkvergadering van de Nederlands-Hervormde Kerk KRIK-project Kritische Kerk Project KVP Katholieke Volkspartij NCSV Nederlandsche Christelijke Studenten Vereniging PPR Politieke Partij Radikalen PSP Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij PvdA Partij van de Arbeid RCN Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland Stucon Studentenconcilie UKSN Unie voor Katholieke Studenten in Nederland VVD Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie WCC Wereldraad van Kerken
65 Sources and Literature
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