Talk:Religion in the Netherlands

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• Basically a good overview, but the page is using outdated (2004)data. Would be better if 2005 data would be used, 2005 data are easily accesible, refer to the Dutch wikipedia site "Godsdiensten in Nederland" and KASKI homepage www.kaski.ru.nl . KASKI is the offcial Dutch Roman Catholic Statistics agency. www.kerkbalans.nl provides annual overviews of the major christian churches. Note : One church, the Dutch Reformed Churches Calvinist (Gereformeerd) with 315900 memebers in 2004 or 1.9% of the Dutch population does not appear in any of the known overviews of Dutch churches. Can someone add the source of this data to this wikipage?
• The page now mentions : "There are also large Catholic communities in Amsterdam, West Friesland and Twente". As per statistics of the Roman Cathic church, the number of catholics in the diocese Haarlem (that covers Amsterdam and West Friesland) is 17.1 % rather a small minority. Can someone provide some data on these "large" catholic communities?
• User "C mon" added again a sentence stating Amsterdam and other regions being in majority catholic which was deleted again. The listed source "bosatlas" can be rather outdated as this was first published in 1877. Anyway, recent data (2005 figures) from the Roman Catholic church itself is quoting less than 20 percent in this region of the Netherlands to be catholic. Again, see above the request to support statements with data. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ruud64 (talk • contribs) 22:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC).

I've taken the liberty of rearranging Ruud64 points, as normal talk pages are ordered. To respond to your three questions.

The current scheme, based on the most recent SCP report (2007!) which includes data for 2004/05. I prefer this data over data over the data Ruud has proposed, because it has far more categories, to reflect the complexity of Dutch religions

Take your Bos Atlas I have the 51st edition (1997) flip to page 46 and look at the map: Zeeuws Vlaanderen, Twente and West Friesland all have catholic pluralities. I want to include these specifically, because it is a common misconception that there are no concentrations of catholics in other regions that Limburg and Brabant. I've updated these statements to reflect this fact.

I will drop Amsterdam, because my current (widely available) soruces, do not specifically reject or corroborate this statement.

Finally, dear Ruud, please take your time to get to know wikipedia rules, procedures and custums: we sign our edits to talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); and we do not remove data but request sources by using <fact>-flags. C mon 23:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Plurality/majority 2 Catholic Mass Attendance 3 No respect for other people's relgions? 4 Hans Knippenberg; very different data in 2000

[edit] Plurality/majority

As per CBS data given for the year 2003 (see for example their statline religion by region overview), and confirmed by KASKI data there are no catholic majorities in the cities/ regions you keep on quoting. Please check current sources before removing and replacing by outdated 1997 data. Ruud64 23:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The article does not state anything about majorities, only about pluralities. (Note: a majority is absolute, above 50%, a plurality is relative, the largest group). In any data, 1997, 2003, Catholics form the largest religous group here. I've reverted back to the original, correct version. C mon 23:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

As per CBS data given for the year 2003 (see for example their statline religion by region overview), and confirmed by KASKI data there are no catholic majorities in the cities/ regions you keep on quoting. Please check current sources before removing and replacing by outdated 1997 data. Ruud64 23:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The article does not state anything about majorities, only about pluralities. (Note: a majority is absolute, above 50%, a plurality is relative, the largest group). In any data, 1997, 2003, Catholics form the largest religous group here. I've reverted back to the original, correct version. C mon 23:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Instead of just once again using the outdated figures from a 1997 publication (referring to data that is from exactly which year ?) , you could have checked the www.cbs.nl site and looked up the 2003 figures (statline) even though these more recent figures are also not fully up to date (% Catholics in the Netherlands in 2003 was 30.4 % , in 2005 dropped down to 29 %). As you seem not to inclined to do this, let me repeat the relevant part of CBS data here (unfortunately the pasting did not work)

Regio Utrecht Percentages 20,7% Catholics, 8,4 % Gereformeerd, 16,5 % Nederlands Hervormd, and 43,7% with no religious affiliation.

Kop van Noord-Holland 29,7 Catholics and 56,2 % with no religious affiliation.

Alkmaar en omgeving 25,2 Catholics and 55,4 % with no religious affiliation

Twente 33,9 Catholics and 34,0 % with no religious affiliation

Obvious from the data in 2003, the largest groups in these areas are not Catholics but the group with "no religious affiliation". In all areas with exception of Twente there is a large delta and clearly the group with no religious affiliation is relative, the largest group and not the Catholics. Considering the recent developments in Twente - closures of churches in 2004 -2007 in places like Hengelo, Oldenzaal and Almelo the gap between Catholics and no religious affiliation will have widened in this region as well.

Some more data, as per a detailed research study for the situation in the city of Nijmegen itself with the title "Kerken kenteren in de Keizerstad' from the Raad van Kerken in Nijmegen and the Nijmeegse University, 2 out of 3 Nijmegenaars were not religious in the year 2001. From a press release of this study (text in Dutch which I hope you can read): Uit het onderzoek, met de titel 'Kerken kenteren in de Keizerstad', blijkt verder dat er tussen de wijken grote verschillen bestaan tussen de aantallen kerkleden. Hees is koploper: die wijk telt op iedere 100 bewoners 55 kerkleden. De Benedenstad, Altrade en Bottendaal tellen het minst aantal kerkleden: 18 van elke 100. Also from this study: Uit een onderzoek van de Raad van Kerken en de Nijmeegse universiteit, dat vandaag wordt gepresenteerd, blijkt dat tweederde van alle Nijmegenaren zich niet meer beschouwt als lid van een kerk, wat meer is dan het landelijk gemiddelde

Lastly to close the earlier discussion on "There are also large Catholic communities in Amsterdam", a few weeks ago the bisdom Haarlem PR chef published following information (again in Dutch)

In Amsterdam-Noord is het aantal katholieken de afgelopen tientallen jaren sterk teruggelopen, net als bijvoorbeeld in West en Oost; de Kommissie Kerkgebouwen Amsterdam, begin jaren tachtig in het leven geroepen, adviseerde in 1988 (!) om 18 van de 40 kerkgebouwen in het toenmalige dekenaat te sluiten. Van 180.000 katholiek gedoopten in 1950 in Amsterdam liep de RK Kerk terug naar 70.000 in 2000.

Wim Peeters Perschef bisdom Haarlem

So in the year 2000, there were a mere 70.000 Catholics in Amsterdam whereas Amsterdam has a population of nearly 1 million. I would not refer to this as a large group as you did.

Lastly for the city of Utrecht I was not able to retrieve any statistics of the number of Catholics in the city. However the number of church attendees in Utrecht has been mentioned to be around 2200. Source: rector N. Schnell van de priesteropleiding van het aartsbisdom Utrecht, interview Nederlands Dagblad January 2006 (in Dutch again)

....Maar door de daling van het kerkbezoek kunnen vieringen in veel minder kerkgebouwen worden gehouden, zegt Schnell. Hij noemt een recente telling op een zondagochtend in de stad Utrecht: er gingen 2200 mensen naar de kerk en er waren 42 vieringen. In zijn visie zou dat aantal kerkgangers beter in vier kerken passen en dan zijn twee priesters voor de hele stad genoeg...

Utrecht has a population of nearly 300.000 , with a church attendance figure of 2.200 so a sunday church attendance of less than 1 %, that hardly indicates a catholic plurality either.

In case better data/ recent figures are available demonstrating the opposite from the above, I am interested to learn and find out about these. However continuing referring to a clearly outdated source published 10 years ago in 1997 does not suffice as a basis for the text in this WIKI page given the more recent available data demonstrating the invalidity of the disputed text.

And the another item for user C mon : Sometime ago I asked following question which you rearranged but never bothered to answer: One church, the Dutch Reformed Churches Calvinist (Gereformeerd) with 315900 memebers in 2004 or 1.9% of the Dutch population does not appear in any of the known overviews of Dutch churches. Can someone add the source of this data to this wikipage? Nobody answered so can this clearly incorrect statement finally be removed? Ruud64 20:36, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I've amended the text to address your concern it now reads that catholicism is the largest religious denomination in these regions. Why I think these mentionings of catholic regions above the river Rhine matters, is to give the reader an overview of where catholicism is, (and was historically!), a strong religion. (Note that your argument fails, these regions are also in plurality catholic, since catholicism is the largest religious denomination, "no religion" is not a religion!).

Dutch Reformed Churches refers to the nl:Nederlands Gereformeerde Kerken, I got the data from nl.wikipedia, I mistakenly added a zero too much therefore overestimating their size. I have corrected this.

I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. C mon 21:36, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Catholic Mass Attendance

This citation only goes to the home page, could someone please get the page - preferably with a translation? JASpencer (talk) 21:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No respect for other people's relgions?

What I have seen arguing is that the Dutch tend to have no respect for other peoples religions: the emphasis is on freedom of speech. Unlike e.g. the USA, there seems to be no taboo on hurting the religious feelings of others. While there is complete freedom of religion, there is also a complete freedom of speech and they seem to clash more strongly here than in other countries. Sources are plenty with the daily debates in the newspapers about this. Andries (talk) 08:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Source: NRC 21 March 2008 reviewing Judith Butler's book "Opgefokte taal" (translated Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative), section "Boek van de Week", page 3 with preface about the Dutch Situation,

"Veel sterker dan in Amerika wordt hier het recht of vrijheid van meningsuiting benadrukt en veel minder ligt hier een taboe op het kwetsen van etnische, raciale of religieuze groepen."

Andries (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Knippenberg; very different data in 2000

According to an article by Hans Knippenberg the percentage of Catholics in the Netherlands was in the year 2000, 17% and protestants 16%

I have not looked into details for the reasons and causes of these very different data, but the article is not NPOV at all. Andries (talk) 19:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Source: Knippenberg, Hans "The Changing Religious Landscape of Europe" edited by Knippenberg published by Het Spinhuis, Amsterdam 2005 ISBN 9055892483, page 92

Affiliation means being a member of an organization. Adherence means follower of a belief system or a set of beliefs. You can be an adherent of a movement without knowing it or even while sincerely convinced that you are not. In other words, affiliation and adherences are quite different concepts. Andries (talk) 19:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)