Where is the wise?
where is the scribe?
where is the disputer of this world?
Apparnently NOT in the Dutch Church
hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
1 Corinthians 1:20
"An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse
presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central
Holland.It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".
"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."
Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.
His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.
A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist
"I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."
Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."
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| Klaas Hendrikse: "You don't have to believe that Jesus was physically resurrected" |
Churches in Amsterdam were hoping to attract such people with a recent open evening.
At the Old Church "in the hottest part of the red light district", the attractions included "speed-dating".
"In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.
"Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion."
To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.
They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith." BBC
