A Changing Church: Childhood, Youth, and Dutch Reformed Revivalism

Abstract

In 1893 Andrew Murray jun., the moderator of the DRC, reminded his fellow clergymen that the future of the church ‘grootendeels afhangt van het welslagen van den arbeid aan de jeugd!’ (depends largely on the success of work with the youth).1 This observation was by no means unique among nineteenth-century evangelicals. After all, the American evangelical minister and author of several influential child-rearing texts John S.C. Abbott remarked to mothers in 1856: The brightest rays of the millennial morn must come from the cradle.’2 Children and family life were not only central to the Christian society envisioned by evangelicals, but the conversion of children was also crucial to evangelical churches’ work. Children could be made into the Christian adults of the future. Ideally, to paraphrase the title of one of Murray’s best-selling books, children should be raised for Christ: parents should ensure that their children were brought up to be Christians. But children could also be converted through other means: in Sunday schools, at special sermons, or during revivals. However, as Murray and his fellow DRC clergymen discovered, children and young people could themselves cause revivals. Their involvement was crucial to the 1860 Great Revival, the first religious awakening to sweep nearly all of the DRC’s congregations in the nineteenth century, and which had a transformative effect on the church.