Religious controversy in comparative context: Ulster, the Netherlands and South Africa in the 1920s
Mathieson, Stuart PatrickORCID: 0000-0002-0781-3747 and Flipse, Abraham C.
(2021)
Religious controversy in comparative context: Ulster, the Netherlands and South Africa in the 1920s.
History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 106
(371).
pp. 429-455.
ISSN 1468-229X
This article introduces a comparative element to the study of the fundamentalist–
modernist controversies of the late 1920s, demonstrating that similar ideas are manifested
differently in different spatial contexts. Although fundamentalism is primarily considered
an American phenomenon, the article argues that the concerns animating fundamentalists
in the United States also caused fierce debates elsewhere. It uses three heresy trials – in
Belfast, Amsterdam and Stellenbosch – as case studies. In each case, the participants were
part of an international Calvinist network, sharing the vast majority of their intellectual
commitments and ecclesiastical structure. Yet these shared intellectual commitments did
not result in the same outcomes when each group attempted to confront the idea of
‘modernism’ using their church disciplinary procedures. This study demonstrates that
social and historical factors played a decisive role in the outcome of each trial. In Belfast,
the violent legacy of the recent Irish War of Independence and partition of Ireland lent
extra weight to calls for restraint and Protestant unity. In Amsterdam, the social structure
of ‘pillarisation’ meant that debates were largely confined within one denomination, and
so could be contested more fiercely. In Stellenbosch, meanwhile, the question of how the
church should approach the fraught issue of race was the key factor.