Liberty and Concord in the United Provinces

The Book of True Civilization: The Origins of the Bible Society Movement in the Age of Enlightenment

“…Enlightenment developments gave religion a new place in society, especially in Protestant countries, from an outward, state-controlled or state-backed, confessional place in the public domain to religion as an inner moral and civilizing conviction located in the individual, in the private domain, as a choice of the heart of free and equal citizens, choices that had to be respected, including different confessional choices that citizens made (van Rooden 1996). Van Eijnatten (2003), using hundreds of eighteenth-century Dutch documents, provides a detailed description of the process of rethinking the place of religion in the Low Countries. The old place was the state-backed public position of the Calvinistic confession in the seventeenth century that created a kind of top-down and outward religious concord and unity, forcing religious minorities to remain invisible in the public domain.…”

“…Its focus had shifted from the outward confessionalism supported by the state to the inward moral persuasion of the individual citizen. (van Eijnatten 2003, 304)…”

“…Modern associations of Enlightenment with atheism and with oppositions of reason and religion are constructions of later centuries that should not be projected back to the eighteenth century. The terms “verlichting” (enlightenment) and “beschaving” (civilization) are often used together by Dutch theologians, publicists, and preachers, and in close connection with Christianity and the Bible, as in a synodal address of 1784 where the Protestant minister Winter refers to Christianity as the way “to the true enlightenment and civilization of a Nation” (van Eijnatten 2003, 479).…”

“…The first line of defense against social chaos and religious conflict was the ideological construction of a non-confessional religious domain supposedly shared by all Christians, whatever their confession, uniting them, with an emphasis on doctrinal simplicity, supposedly simple truths shared by all Christians (van Eijnatten 2003, 369–71). Central to this non-confessional common ground was the Bible, constructed as a non-confessional entity, not owned by any church or confession, one Bible for all.…”

“…Within this non-confessional Bible a core of “simple,” fundamental Christian (non-confessional) truths was constructed, usually located in the moral teachings of Jesus, and this formed the second line of defense against fragmentation and chaos, a critical distinction between fundamentals and historically grown non-fundamentals (van Eijnatten 2003, 309–69).…”