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
Frans Kuyper Frans Kuyper Frans Kuyper (Latin: Cuperus) (1629, Amsterdam — 21 October 1691, Rotterdam) was a Dutch Socinian writer and printer. First a Remonstrant minister at Vlaardingen, he left the church on his objection to infant baptism. From 1663–1673 he opened a publishing house in Amsterdam and Rotterdam producing Socinian works, including 1665–1668 (with supplement 1692) the "Biblioteca fratrum Polonorum". In 1676 he published against Spinoza's 1670 treatise on historical criticism of the Scriptures. Kuyper played a leading part in the liberal movement of the Mennonites named the "Collegiants", through which some Socinian ideas entered Mennonitism. Kuyper was one of the