From Secession to Union to Secession: The Birth of the Christian Reformed Church
This article traces the origins of the Christian Reformed Church through the experiences of Dutch religious dissenters who fled persecution in the Netherlands following the 1834 Afscheiding (Secession) from the state church. It documents how leaders like Rev. Van Raalte established immigrant communities in western Michigan and eventually formed a new denomination in 1857, illustrating the intersection of religious conviction, ecclesiastical polity, and diaspora church-planting in 19th-century America.
Rev. Koenraad van den Bosch was not pleased. The church scene in America that greeted this immigrant from the Netherlands was intolerable, and he intended to do something about it. The result of his actions was the formation of a new denomination of churches. The year was 1857. The setting was western Michigan. The new denomination was the Christian Reformed Church. In order to see how this story unfolded, we must back up a few years to 1847 and take up our position at the mouth of the Black...
Full article available on sb.rfpa.org