The Dutch Bible Belt

I  am writing these words in the heart of the Bible Belt. I'm in a small town that is traditionally pious but has swelled in recent years with the infusion of well-educated commuters who have left the nearby big city to escape crime and immorality. Here and in neighboring communities, newly built mega­churches are growing. They preach a very traditional orthodox theology. Also boom­ing are hardline right-wing political parties which take very conservative positions on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and gender roles.

This certainly is not the standard picture that Amer­icans have of the Neth­er­lands. But the Dutch have a Bible Belt, or Bijbelgordel, which runs from the northeast of the country to the southwest. Its borders can be easily mapped using patterns of religious affiliation and political voting. It is not a large territory—in places it is only 30 or 40 miles wide—but it represents a substantial portion of this small country (the entire Nether­lands is only about as large as Maryland and Dela­ware combined).

The persistence of a rigorously orthodox Protestant area in such a bastion of progressive liberalism must make us rethink any generalizations we might be tempted to make about the state of religion in Europe as a whole.