Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture

by James Bratt

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 1984

Overview

In this scholarly yet entertaining book, James D. Bratt takes a look at the Dutch in America from the late-nineteenth century to the present. A comprehensive study of an ethnic subculture, the book is in large part a study of the group’s religious history as well, since, as Bratt points out, the contours of the Dutch presence in America have been overwhelmingly shaped by the church and its subsidiary organizations. Although the book is extensively and scrupulously documented, Bratt infused his scholarship with a considerable amount of anecdote that is by turns poignant and tragic and hilarious. In Bratt’s analysis of the fitful progress of Americanization that this close-knit religious community has undergone, we are treated to the sharp insights of a bemused and sometimes disaffected insider. Included is a chapter on novelists Arnold Mulder, David Cornel DeJong, Frederick Manfred, and Peter DeVries—four sons of the Dutch who fled the subculture only to reflect upon it almost obsessively from the outside. Well written, scholarly, and highly readable, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America will have wide appeal among both academic and general readers.

Product Details

• Title: Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture
• Author: James Bratt
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 1984
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Reformed Church › United States--History; Dutch › United States--Religion; Calvinism › United States--History
• ISBNs: 9780802800091, 0802800092
• Resource ID: LLS:DTCHCLVNSSBCLTR
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:24:32Z

About James Bratt

James Donald Bratt is a scholar of Abraham Kuyper, and is currently a full-time professor at Calvin College. An alumnus of Calvin, Bratt received his PhD from Yale University after writing his dissertation, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America. He is currently working on a biography of Kuyper. His other areas of specialty include colonial American history, and American intellectual and religious history.