The PKN was formed in 2004 as a merger of the two major strands of Calvinism: the Dutch Reformed Church (which then represented roughly 8.5% of the population) and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (then 3.7% of the population), plus a smaller Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (0.1%). Since the 1970s, these three churches had seen a major decline in adherents and had begun to work together. The PKN itself claims that 9.1% of the Dutch population is a member in 2016. About 4% of newborns were baptized within the PKN in 2014. The Church embraces religious pluralism. Research shows that 42% of the members of the PKN are non-theist. Furthermore, in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) and several other smaller denominations of the Netherlands, 1 in 6 members of the clergy report being either agnostic or atheist.