The Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) are close but different. The RCA seems to have more room for diversity on the issues of human sexuality, and churches can even celebrate same-sex marriages. Some CRC folks have asked whether they might fit better in the RCA, but they realize how little they actually know about the RCA. So as an RCA scholar with many ties to the CRC, I have prepared this essay on how the RCA differs from the CRC in history, habits, and structures. Much of my material appeared in an earlier document called Thirty Differences between the RCA and the CRC, which has circulated among various CRC pastors.
It is remarkable to me that the differences between the RCA and the CRC are epitomized by the names of their respective LGBTQA advocacy organizations. All One Body sounds idealistic, biblical, Pauline, seeking union, cohesion, and alignment, and suggesting “all for one and one for all.” By contrast, Room for All sounds looser, more practical, more eschatological, Lukan rather than Pauline, assuming multiplicity, variety, and space, and requiring the practice of embracing otherness. “All one body” trades on shared identity, while “room for all” trades on active hospitality. It’s wonderful how these groups are typically CRC and typically RCA.
History
How the RCA came to be this way is a matter of history. (In what follows I must ignore some complications.) The RCA and CRC have 177 years of shared history beginning with the Dutch immigration to Michigan in 1847, which expanded westward till 1916. From this comes the Midwestern and Western RCA, and the whole CRC in the United States. The immigrant leaders had all come from the Seceded Reformed Church, congregations that had left the national church of the Netherlands. Some joined in with the RCA, which already had English-speaking churches in Michigan. Some stayed out to form the CRC.
Those who joined the RCA moved into a house that was already 212 years old, with structures already in place, and with residents who valued the same doctrines but had different habits. The house had been built by the colonial immigrants who came to New Netherland from 1609 to 1664. In 1628, just nine years after the Synod of Dort, the first RCA church in New Amsterdam (New York) was planted by the national Dutch Reformed Church and there were ten parishes by the English takeover of New Amsterdam in 1664. They multiplied to a hundred congregations by 1776, all speaking Dutch, all loyal to the state church in the Netherlands; and in many places in New York and New Jersey, where the Dutch-American population held its majority, the only church in town. From their descendants and neighbors developed the membership of the Eastern RCA. To this day, RCA members from New York have little or no awareness of the CRC, and this part of the RCA experience is opaque to the CRC.
Indeed, the CRC began as a rejection of this experience and of the Dutch church heritage that the RCA valued. This was because between the first and second immigrations, after the settlement of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the national Dutch church was recast as an arm of the crown. The cabinet ran the church, radically altered its church order, and sponsored modernist theology. Orthodox groups developed within the national church that never seceded. But others did, and were abused by church and state, and led the second immigration.
Albertus Van Raalte and his Seceder colleagues were welcomed and assisted by the Eastern RCA. In 1850, their Classis of Holland entered the RCA, having reckoned that the RCA, despite its American habits, was true to the doctrines and constitution of Dort. Those who stayed out formed the CRC, the American version of the Seceded church, with its secessionist habits of separation, purity, and judgment on other churches. Their numbers swelled with another secession in 1882 when the RCA’s General Synod ruled that it did not have the constitutional authority to compel consistories to ban Freemasons from membership. Another influx came with immigrants from the Gereformeerde churches of Abraham Kuyper’s separation, but their influence in the CRC would not develop until later, and was little felt in the RCA. For the next century in the Midwest, the RCA and CRC faced each other in town after town, occasionally with hostility and often with resentment (and intermarriage).
The Kuyperian influence was magnified after World War II with the third immigration, which went mostly to Canada (with some to California), and mostly into the CRC. These too had to move into someone else’s house, which has become less comfortable of late. If Canadian CRCs have tensions with the American CRC, imagine how little sympathy they’d have with the Midwestern RCA, and of the Eastern RCA there would be no knowledge at all. It would take a lot of translation to show that they might have more in common than they’d realized.
Habits
The RCA was established and funded by the civil authorities as public churches on the parish model. All citizens belonged, no matter what their background or belief. Its parochial schools were the public schools. In many parts of New York and New Jersey it remained the public church until after the American Revolution—in Brooklyn till 1810. This public church legacy still endures in the Eastern RCA.
Eastern RCA churches still act like parishes while CRC and Midwestern RCA churches act like congregations. Congregations gather people who share behaviors and beliefs. Congregations can move, especially out of changing neighborhoods. Parishes are geographically rooted and are meant for whomever lives nearby. Even when neighborhoods change, RCA parishes are more open and tolerant than CRC congregations, but also less warm and with less feeling of “belonging” (at least for those who succeed at belonging). It’s “room for all” versus “all one body.”
The parish model has given the RCA a larger cohort of Black and African-American members than the CRC. Already in the 1950’s, as New York City neighborhoods changed, RCA churches evolved their memberships from white to Black. A plurality of these members were Afro-Caribbean with Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Moravian identities. Sixty years of this experience has produced a cadre of Black and African-American pastors (and consistories) who are as deeply RCA as anyone else. Since 1968, a vital African-American Black Council has witnessed prophetically to the RCA and to the racism harbored within it. The Council played a key role in the RCA’s witness against apartheid in South Africa and it strongly supported the Belhar Confession.
The RCA has been generally conservative, but without judging others. Unlike the CRC, it has never been “antithetical” nor spoken of “the Antithesis.” It has always been ecumenical. No RCA leader has said, “In isolation is our strength.” Its Global Missions policy has been ecumenical since 1810. In China, Japan, and Arabia it set up, not daughter RCA churches, but indigenous churches that were self-governing, self-sustaining, and self-propagating, and partnered with other Protestant missionaries to do so.
From its beginning, as a branch of a national church, the RCA wanted to make Protestants, not “Calvinists.” Its Calvinism was for making good Protestants, not for advancing Calvinism. The RCA never developed anything like Calvinist Cadet Corps, the Calvinettes, or the Young Calvinists. Its message was “How am I right with God,” not “a Christian worldview.” Its parish schools were taught by catechists. These evolved into common schools and eventually public schools, which, until the 1950’s, generally favored Protestantism, so the RCA went along with them.
Perhaps because of the unbroken nature of the RCA’s national church heritage, the RCA tends to think historically, while the CRC thinks doctrinally. The RCA values continuity and relationships more than being right. And parallel to this, members belong to the RCA not because they think it is truer or better or has a unique mission to other Christians, but because they like it, or are comfortable with it, or have a history with it, or because it is respectable and has sufficient integrity.
The lack of a special mission to other Christians goes with its relative lack of Kuyperianism. Although it was RCA churches that Abraham Kuyper visited when he came to America for the Stone Lectures in 1896, the Kuyperian immigrants were directed to join the CRC. The “square-inch” slogan is little used in the RCA. The RCA’s favorite Dutch theologians, A. A. van Ruler and Hendrikus Berkhof, are more eschatological (like the Belhar Confession) and place more cultural stress on the Holy Spirit. You can certainly be a Kuyperian in the RCA, but you’ll have no special advantages.
Beginning in the 1850’s, a new denominational habit inside the RCA had to be developed to incorporate the new members from the second immigration. These Seceders were of the milder sort (the stricter sort went CRC), but they did expect purity and they did not have the “public church” sense of serving the whole community. Their churches were congregations, not parishes. The RCA responded by developing the denominational habit of the coalition. The coalition was a habit of “room for all” rather than “all one body.”
For the next 150 years the maintenance of this coalition defined the RCA in a way that was unknown in the CRC: balancing East and Midwest, old colonial Dutch and new immigrant Dutch, public church and secession church, parish and congregation, mainline Protestant and Pietist evangelical, etc. The leaders of the RCA were those people who could manage this coalition by means of relationships, and relational skills became important in RCA leadership. The coalition united in supporting Hope College and foreign missions. Missionaries from both sides of the coalition worked harmoniously together.
Since 1850 the RCA coalition has managed the tension between two discourses: acceptance versus purity. (I thank Professor. John Coakley for this insight.) The Eastern RCA, as public church, talks welcome and inclusion. The Midwestern RCA, with secessionist roots, talks purity (as does the CRC). The tension was tested by debates over the World and National Councils of Churches and divorce. But with the human sexuality debate the tension could not hold and the coalition failed, leading to the departure of almost 250 congregations. Most of these gathered into “networks” and mini-denominations of their own, with the typical secessionist habits of separation, purity, and judgment on other churches. It’s worth noting that very few of these joined the CRC. The habits of the CRC are different, despite a shared conservatism on human sexuality. The RCA seceders are used to more room and freedom, and would not have easily fit in the CRC’s more unitary body.
The coalition had allowed the RCA to be both more liberal and more conservative than the CRC. It tolerates more diversion from the Doctrinal Standards and the Liturgy and relies more on self-discipline. It doesn’t try to protect the Doctrinal Standards but trusts them over time to do their work. In the East this allowed cases of mainline liberalism (which are fewer now), such as quiet Unitarianism among some tall-steeple pastors in Upstate New York, and in the Midwest many cases of evangelicalism and even fundamentalism. With so many churches having left, the RCA as an aggregate is suddenly less conservative, for now at least. Indeed, the RCA has many more “open and affirming” pastors and congregations than the CRC: 298 pastors and 44 congregations have rostered with Room for All, and a great many more do not consider the sexuality issue church-dividing. Only a few of RCA Canadians consider it “confessional.”
The RCA’s looseness and lack of unity has bothered its leaders, and since 1992 they have tried to forge unity and “alignment” by means of a strong general secretary who is to “articulate a vision for the church.” Successive general secretaries have gradually centralized the structures, reduced denomination-wide voluntary participation, and weakened the General Synod. This strategy has obviously failed as a unifier, and the resultant decrease in free conversation and a much reduced network of relationships has only aggravated the disunity.
Structures
Structures shape habits and habits shape structures. The chief structural difference between the RCA and the CRC is that the RCA has a constitution and the CRC does not. The RCA thinks in constitutional ways that the CRC does not. The backbone of the RCA Constitution allows for a kind of federalism unnatural to the CRC and it gives the RCA more room for local discretion.
The RCA has a constitution because it became independent from the Netherlands church as a result of the American Revolution, during the era of constitution-making in general. The RCA Constitution that was ratified in 1792 was by design the historic “Netherlandic Constitution,” adjusted only to meet American free-church circumstances. Its basic structure endures to this day. It consists of the Doctrinal Standards, the Government, and the Liturgy.
The Doctrinal Standards are the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of Dort, and the Belhar Confession. The Liturgy is published as Worship the Lord and is observed at the discretion of the consistory, although the Government requires certain observances for the sacraments, ordinations, and installations. The Government, the Disciplinary Procedures, Formularies, and some non-constitutional items, are published as the Book of Church Order. The Doctrinal Standards and the Liturgy have constitutional authority according to their proper purposes, for guiding teaching and worship, but not as laws or rules in disguise (although there was an attempt to make the Marriage Liturgy outlaw same-sex marriage). Amendments approved by General Synod require confirmation by two-thirds of the classes and approval by the next General Synod.
While the CRC locates power within its synod and its local councils, the RCA locates power within its constitution and the classes. It limits the authority of synods, compared to the CRC. The RCA has no equivalent of the CRC’s Article 29—no RCA synod can make any ruling that is “settled and binding.” Only the constitution is settled and binding. No synod has the authority to force an interpretation of the Standards on the classes or churches.
For example, the General Synod has a policy against same-sex marriage, and this policy is observed by General Synod staff and its agencies, but this policy does not bind the next General Synod, nor does it bind regional synods, classes, or consistories, which are free to follow that policy or not, provided they are satisfied that they observe the Constitution. My consistory in Brooklyn, despite the General Synod policy, had full discretion to approve the same-sex marriages that I performed, and the classes have full discretion to ordain and install LGBTQ pastors. It was this local discretion under the Constitution that frustrated those who wanted to enforce the General Synod policy against same-sex marriage on all churches and pastors, and was a cause of their departure.
The RCA has regional synods. The RCA has them because the national Dutch church had them. They too make room in the RCA. They are diverse and their programs vary greatly. Two RCA general secretaries have tried to scrap them as obstacles to “alignment.” Regional synods have general superintendence over the classes and are courts of appeal. Regional synods organize and disband classes and determine their boundaries. The eight regional synods are Albany, Canada, Far West, Great Lakes, Heartland, Mid-America, Mid-Atlantics, and New York.
Classes are more powerful in the RCA. The Constitution reserves to the classes anything not specifically assigned to another assembly. RCA classes do everything CRC classes do, plus ratify constitutional amendments, practice discretion relative to synodical policies, and hold the credentials of ministers. Minsters are members of classes, not consistories. Classes review certain property decisions by consistories: when a church disbands the property reverts to the classes. Stronger classes make the RCA less congregational than the CRC but also make more room.
The RCA has consistories, not “councils,” including ministers, elders, and deacons. Consistories hold full title to church property. The consistory deals with all matters in the local church not specifically assigned to the board of elders and the board of deacons. Deacons have been included in RCA consistories since 1628, but not in classes or synods, as their ministry does not include “spiritual government.”
The RCA has more judicial restraint than the CRC. There is no cross-judicatory discipline, and ministers and consistories may not be charged by anyone beyond the membership of their own churches and classes. Synods are strictly courts of appeal. RCA synods have no power to intervene in the discipline of classes and consistories—no RCA synod could tell a classis how to discipline one of its consistories, nor try to discipline the consistory itself. This judicial restraint was also a frustration of recent RCA seceders.
For over 60 years, the RCA has had a different form of subscription, which it calls “The Declaration for Ministers.” It is only for ministers, not elders and deacons. It is not a “covenant” but a testimony. Ministers declare, among other things, that “I accept the Scriptures as the only rule of faith and life. I accept the Standards as historic and faithful witnesses to the Word of God.” It does not say, “…whose doctrines fully agree with the Word of God.” While it’s been said that you can drive a truck through “historic and faithful witnesses,” the RCA takes the language as a realistic adherence to the Standards. For elders and deacons, their promises are in the Liturgy.
Women have been ordained in the RCA as deacons, elders, and ministers for over 50 years, which means for 50 years women have been seated as delegates and served as officers at all levels of RCA assemblies. For a while there was a “conscience clause” that allowed ministers and elders not to participate in services of ordination and installation of women, but that clause is now revoked. (The revocation of which also frustrated those who recently seceded.)
The RCA is in full communion with the PCUSA, UCC, and ELCA, and also has a full-exchange agreement with the CRC. The RCA is a founding member of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (now the World Communion of Reformed Churches), the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, and Christian Churches Together. The Regional Synod of Canada belongs to the Canadian Council of Churches.
Since 2009, not without opposition, the RCA has been experimenting with non-geographical classes. There are precedents for non-geographic classes in Dutch Reformed history, but the idea of “affinity classes” has been rejected by the Commission on Theology. The goal is for non-geographic classes to be temporary, but there is no mechanism for enforcing that.
Beginning in 2018, under pressure from those who were threatening to leave, the RCA began to consider restructuring as a way to holding the denomination together, and a process of restructuring began in 2021. It proved to be too late, but the restructuring process continues anyway. It is now motivated by the desire by the core staff and current leadership to remold the RCA with a vision and mission focused almost exclusively on church-planting. The Restructuring Team will make its recommendations to the General Synod of 2024, and if these pass they go to the classes for two-thirds confirmation, and then ratification by the General Synod of 2025.
So far the proposals look drastic. The RCA will imitate the tighter, centralized structures of the “networks” of churches that have left. It will be a hard sell, judging by the resistance to the first draft at the General Synod of 2023. If it passes this General Synod it will still need two-thirds of the classes to approve it, which will mean voting themselves out of existence. Is this likely? Who knows? I doubt that many CRCs will want to join what used to be the RCA.
It looks like denominations are passing things. But there will be congregations, and ordained office-bearers, and they will need some structure of mutual accountability, which is pretty much all that the RCA has been, and ultimately not much more, despite the exertions of its visionary leaders. The CRC has always idealistically assumed that it must be more, and that puts it more at risk. Should a denomination be “all one body,” or is it better to offer “room for all?” The choice might be yours.
Thanks, Daniel. This was helpful – at least to me.
Ditto. So here’s another thank you.
A very helpful review of history and polity, as well as the deeper issues that shape the cultures of the RCA and CRCNA. Thanks, Daniel.
Do take a look at Abram Van Engen’s piece from twenty years ago, “Jacob and Esau.” I may add that I am guessing that he is named “Abram” after his late grandfather, who was a beloved mentor of mine.
Daniel.
I have read many comparisons of our two denominations but this is the most up-to-date and insightful statement I have seen. I was especially struck by the unifying role that Liturgy plays in the RCA structure. Lots of food for thought. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Okay, I read your piece and Van Engen’s piece, now I need you to teach a class with a white board to help me map it all out!!!
Thank you,
Learned and insightful, as always, Daniel. Thank you for this.
Yes, thank you for this. When we worked on the joint hymnal (Lift Up Your Hearts) with half CRC and half RCA folks, I learned some of the RCA polity as far as worship. But always, there was much more that we had in common than what divided us. And as we live in the second advent, I can’t help but think of that last stanza of the hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel – O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease, and be Thyself our King of Peace.
“Our sad divisions”. . . . or, as it says in the commended prayer after the Supper in the RCA liturgy (bring to an end our unhappy divisions.” (the expression ‘unhappy divisions’ being lifted from the BCP 1928, at the very least. I’m not a liturgical scholar) Would that our divisions were truly experienced as “sad” or “unhappy.” I fear that folks on opposite sides of the RCA/CRC divide have formed their identities, in part, on the basis of the very divisions Daniel brings to the surface. For example: “RCA person, why do you send your children to public school?” “Because we believe that the people of God need to be in, and hence influence the public square; not like those afgescheiding CRC’s and their Christian schools.” The subtext being, “we’re doing it the right way; isn’t it good to *be* us?” We just do not want it to be lain “to heart the grave dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions.”
I also found this insightful. Thanks Dan.
I do wonder about your final paragraph, especially this sentence: “The CRC has always idealistically assumed that it must be more, and that puts it more at risk.” Is this true numerically? Is the CRC shrinking also? It seems to me that the RCA, because it is united in so few ways, is the one that is in free fall, but I wonder if the stats bear that out.
You are welcome Dean, and good question. Yes, in the Midwest and West the RCA is in free fall, but here in the East it is not felt that way at all. Long slow American churchly decline, of course, but not free fall. The troubles in the RCA Midwest and West are known to our Eastern RCA pastors, but to our congregants is not much more than a distant rumor. But I mean that the CRC is more “at risk,” and may yet avoid what it is at risk of. At risk is not the same thing as being in actual danger or trial. But notice how some of your “Abide” pastors are calling for the “progressive” to just leave. And then also the rumblings from Canada. The CRC has always had, and wanted, a stronger identity. Notice Will Katerberg’s three articles in the Banner: a kind of communion that is deeper than ordinary church membership. That common identity is certainly at risk, especially as Christian school attendance decreases in proportion, and kids go to Grand Valley instead of Calvin (etc. etc.) The greater risk is in how the CRC defines itself and understands what to expect of itself and of its members. One attractive way to maintain that extra intimacy and identity and theological uniformity is to draw the oxcarts into the laager. And that too is a risk.
Thanks! I will look up the Banner articles. I don’t know the CRC well.
I’d like to respond to this sentence: “Notice how some of your “Abide” pastors are calling for the “progressive” to just leave.” To those of us in the RCA who hold the historic RCA view on marriage, that seems only fair. After decades of debate, “progressives” refuse to abide by the RCA’s historic theological position, and continue to push the alternate definition in theological papers and General Synods. It is wearying, and whether we like it or not, this is why some churches are leaving.
If both “sides” are banging their heads against the wall, and believe that “here we stand, and we can do no other”, why take on additional head trauma for additional decades?
I understand. And forgive my mistake. I had assumed, I don’t know why, from your question that you are CRC. Apparently you are RCA, is that right? I should have remembered the Van Farowe’s from Ontario Classis.
But I want to be in the same denomination with people who hold to the historic view. I recognize it as the historic and catholic view. I come out differently, but I don’t want to be separate from you.
Beautiful, caring statement. Thank you Dan.
Ps. Yes, my father Harvey and also my uncle Richard served in Ontario.
Ps.s. I went to an urban ministry conference at your church in Hoboken around the year 1999 that I very much appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. Your teaching offers so much insight into my personal experience while leaving so many questions. I grew up in West Michigan. My wider family was primarily CRC. My father brought us to the RCA. I went to Cadets and Christian schools. Both felt oddly like home and suffocating. I graduated from Calvin, more progressive than my classmates and chose Western over Calvin seminary at the strong recommendation of one of my religion professors. Western felt like home and suffocating. I ended up in NJ as a pastor, but at a congregational RCA church, more Midwestern than East in its culture and history. We sent our children to public schools but not without many conversations between my partner and me. After 23 years, we are part of room for all, an ecumenical parish church, more interfaith, more liturgical, more sacramental, in more relationships with other Classis congregations most of whom are more conservative than us. This is my story in short, and your writing helps me understand it better.
p.s. I married a CRC girl, a relatable experience if I remember correctly. If not, one I know others in this communion know quite well.
Once again, thanks Daniel.
Thank you Daniel. This is excellent! Succinct and insightful.
Is ecclesiastical communion a transitive relation? If so the CRC isn’t so insular after all: it is in a brotherly / sisterly bond, at just one remove, from mainline Presbyterians, Lutherans, and the UCC. Such an encouraging thought.
Thanks for an illuminating historical denominational biography.
When the Reformed-Lutheran dialogue first started in 1962, leading to the publication of Marburg Revisited in 1966 or so, the CRC was invited to become a full partner, and it accepted. At the next stage, however, the CRC dropped out. The Missouri Synod Lutherans did the same. I don’t know first hand their respective reasons (I can guess), but I wish they both had stayed in. Clarence Boomsma told me in the 1990s, I think regretfully, that the RCA’s steps toward full communion with the Lutheran’s would keep the reunion of the RCA and CRC off the table.
Thanks, Daniel, for another splendid piece! I would like to offer just one minor historical correction: You state that “Albertus Van Raalte and his Seceder colleagues were welcomed and assisted by the Eastern RCA. In 1850, their Classis of Holland entered the RCA…. Those who stayed out formed the CRC….” Actually, all of Classis Holland joined the RCA in 1850, and seven years later four congregations and two ministers left the classis to form the CRC. 90% of the Seceders stayed in the RCA; 10% became seceders yet again.
Thank you Lyle. I had better get that straight!
Thanks, Daniel! It reminds us that there is so much more to the conversation than the current moment. I have of course learned the history (some from you!), but the way you lay it out here brings some contrasts/correlations I had forgotten or never fully understood. Much appreciated!
What is taught from the pulpit at the RCA & the CRC?
Interesting. As two denominations that occupy virtually the same space on the spectrum that is all of Christendom, I would categorize all that you have shared as constituting the adiaphora.
Enlightening. Timely. Helpful. Thanks.
Thank you for this interesting and informative article. But, once again, let’s take a look at the numbers. Only 44 RCA churches are on board with “Room for All” and the CRC has a very small 13 churches that are on record supporting “All One Body”. When almost half of the members of the RCA denomination left, it wasn’t just over the Sexuality issue but of how scripture is interpreted. Most CRC congregants are conservative, but the progressives outnumber them in the denominational offices and push their agenda through the CRC publications. This situation is untenable. A split is inevitable just like in the RCA. Our leaders have pushed for years to be a racially diverse body of believers and just like in the UMC our diverse newcomers are conservative! From a practical viewpoint, not to mention a Biblical viewpoint, it makes the most sense to stand firm as the conservative denomination that we are.
An eye-opener to a former CRCer. It rings so true!
Pastor Meeter,
Thank you for this article. I found it clear-sighted and fair.
As a CRCer with strong CRC convictions, I not only recognize the observations given here about the CRC as generally accurate, but I also embrace them as favorable to the posture described for the RCA. Probably not surprising.
I plan on responding to this article in my own writing. I’m confident that you will disagree with my conclusions and my hopes.
But I wanted to let you know, and I wanted to thank you for this fair assessment.
Well, thank you Trevor. I am grateful