Buiten kerk en moskee

ter 2). The main bastions of traditional religious belief in the modern-day Netherlands are
the orthodox reformed Bible belt, a few communities of Christian migrants and the population
of Dutch Muslims. The stabilitas loci in these milieus are not showing any tendency to
expand to other population segments or to arouse interest in them for participation or
renewed participation in these circles.
Does all this make the Netherlands a secularising country? And does it mean that atheists
and agnostics – one of the two ideological groups that are key in the final report in the
trilogy – are gradually gaining the upper hand? In most of the usual senses, the answer is
yes. This is evident from the loss of monopolies by religious institutions, the reducing of
religion to the personal sphere, the greatly diminished influence of religion in the everyday
life of modern society and the process of ‘depillarisation’ (the ending of the segregation of
Dutch society along denominational lines). It is evident from the diminished control over
the lives of affiliates and the greatly reduced popularity of the professed religious beliefs,
or the declining participation in the rituals, or the reduced knowledge of the traditions and
doctrines. The shifts are moving immutably in the direction of a crumbling significance of
religion, or at least the traditional Christian religion, for Dutch society and the Dutch population
as a whole. Nonetheless, a number of religious bastions would also seem to be holding
their own.
8.3 Towards the future
The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (Nederlands Interdisciplinair Demografisch
Instituut, nidi) and Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, cbs) have
calculated that the number of Dutch citizens with a migration background – this part of the
population, which consists relatively often of Muslims and is not or not yet showing any or
just a few signs of secularisation (Huijnk 2018) – may increase from approximately onequarter
of the population today to approximately one-third in 2050 (nidi and cbs 2020: 15).
Thus, an increase in the number of Muslims is likely, although these are just forecasts, and
only some of the estimated one in three Dutch citizens with a migration background in
2050 will be Muslim. Although we do not know what the future has in store, it is known
that a very large number of Muslims today strongly identify as Muslim (Huijnk 2018). It is
also conceivable that strong secularisation among the Christian part of the population in
recent decades will continue (although probably at a slightly slower pace), because of
which there will be a continued, gradual growth in the number of agnostics and atheists.
Thus, by extension, the percentage of the population that identifies as Christian will continue
to fall, despite a possible increase (via migration) of the number of Christian migrants in
our country. Religious diversity – the Netherlands is already one of the most religiouslydiverse
countries in the world (Pew 2014) – in our country will increase further as a result.
To summarise, there is little reason to suppose that secularisation will be brought to a halt
in the next few decades. At the same time, it is possible that the number of orthodox and
other Muslims will increase and religious belief will resurge in certain small Christian
circles. The developments expected in the ideological landscape present Dutch society with
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