History of religion in the Netherlands forbidden to hold religious processions in all provinces except for Noord Brabant and Limburg. The Netherlands was ruled by a liberal Calvinist elite, which dominated the bureaucracy and the Dutch Reformed Church, leading to splits. In 1834, led by Rev. Hendrik de Cock, a group seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church in what was known as the "Afscheiding". Roughly fifty years later, in 1886, another group of orthodox Calvinists, led by Abraham Kuyper, split from the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1892, they founded the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, one of the major neo-Calvinist denominations. Kuyper also organized a whole
Abraham Kuyper plead for the separation of church and state. In 1867, Kuyper was asked to become minister for the parish in Utrecht and he left Beesd. In 1870 he was asked to come to Amsterdam. In 1871 he began to write for the "De Heraut" ("The Herald"). In 1872, he founded his own paper, "De Standaard" ("The Standard"). This paper would lay the foundation for the network of Reformed organisation, (the Reformed pillar), which Kuyper would found. In 1886, Kuyper led an exodus from the Dutch Reformed Church. He grieved the loss of Reformed distinctives within this State Church, which no