Bruin of paars

Een reactie op Peter van Rooden

Samenvatting

This essay responds to Peter van Rooden’s critical review of the report God in the Netherlands 1966-2024 in this journal. Besides minor criticisms of the scope and methodology of the study (the research was limited to Christianity, as in all previous editions, and the authors’ commentaries were primarily intended to be informative, leaving interpretation and further research to specialists), Van Rooden criticizes the report’s characterization of Dutch ‘civil religion’ as a serious error. The use of this concept — which he associates with right-wing extremism — without examining Muslims ‘stinks of a brown sewer’. Because he emphasizes he is giving a political judgement of a scholarly work for the first time in his academic career, this response brings back to mind Van Rooden’s own interpretation of the so-called ‘purple unity’ of the Dutch religious regime, magnifying non-Christian liberalism while neglecting Islam and orthodox Protestantism (Van Rooden 1996). The critic falls on his own sword.