Buiten kerk en moskee

8 Concluding remarks on three reports
8.1 Three reports
We will end this trilogy of reports by reviewing the ideological changes described in them.
The two previous reports, which were published in 2018, were entitled The religious experience
of muslims in the netherlands. A focus on diversity and change (De religieuze beleving van moslims
in Nederland. Diversiteit en verandering in beeld; Huijnk 2018) and Christians in the Netherlands:
ecclesiastical participation and Christian faith (Kerkelijke deelname en christelijke gelovigheid; De Hart
and Van Houwelingen 2018). Our trilogy concentrates on four population groups: Christian
believers, Muslims, people with spiritual interests and non-believers (who do not believe in
a religion or spiritual alternatives to a religion). The three reports focus on recent developments
in particular, against the background of long-term ideological developments in the
Netherlands.
8.2 Placing the outcomes of this trilogy in the context of broader and longer-term
developments
8.2.1 The erosion of Christianity in the Netherlands
We will discuss several ideological developments in this report, limiting our attention to
the Netherlands and approximately the last 50 years. Christianity in the Netherlands eroded
quickly. Between 1970 and 2020, the Dutch population grew by approximately onethird.
In the same 50-year period, the number of Dutch citizens who were part of a church
community fell by approximately 4 million – a reduction of more than 40% – while all the
growth churches together recorded a membership increase of less than 230,000. To put
this into perspective: this is like losing the population of the eight biggest cities in our
country and gaining just the residents of Den Bosch and Haarlemmermeer. In short, although
the situation is not the same for every church, surveys and the numbers provided
by churches themselves lead to the conclusion that the Netherlands is a country that is
secularising rapidly (De Hart and Van Houwelingen 2018: 155 et seq.), even in comparison
with other secularising European countries (Chapter 2). This development has had an especially
great impact on the Roman Catholic church in the last 50 years; the reorganisation,
merger and closing of Catholic parishes are the order of the day.
Surveys show that six in ten Dutch citizens have little trust in churches and religious organisations
(a marked contrast with the great trust placed in scientific institutions). Threequarters
of respondents now say they feel that churches are not able to answer the most
important spiritual questions of the day. Three-quarters of respondents also say that the
views of churches do not reflect their own life vision or only barely do so (De Hart and Van
Houwelingen 2018: 48 et seq.). In 2019, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research
(Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, scp) published the results of the biggest ever socio-scientific
research project on the Dutch identity to date, part of which involved a survey of 5,000 re-
152 c o n c l u d i n g r e m a r k s o n t h r e e r e p o r t s