Last month’s elections within the Netherlands caused a political earthquake.
Led by the Islamophobic and Eurosceptic Geert Wilders—often described because the Dutch Donald Trump—the populist Party for Freedom (PVV) won 37 seats within the 150-seat lower house of Parliament, greater than doubling their 17-seat end in 2021. Winning a substantially larger share than the runner-up Labor–Green-Left coalition with 25 seats, the PVV, led by Wilders in singular authority, now has the within track to forming a government.
The PVV clearly benefited from the brutal October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, demonstrating that extremism breeds radical responses not only in Israel but in addition in Dutch elections.
Left-wing parties continued their decline. In 1998 the Labor Party, Green-Left Party, and non-coalition Socialist Party together received 61 seats. The same parties sunk to 30 seats in 2023.
Wilders’s election and the rightward shift of Parliament is the capstone not of spiritual resurgence, nevertheless, but of a 70-year means of secularization that has seen faith-based parties decimated amid growing uncertainty about the fee of living.
Three denominationally based Christian Democratic parties dominated Dutch politics from the early twentieth century, claiming 76 seats in 1965. In the Seventies, they campaigned under the motto of “ethical revival,” advocating a return to Christian norms and values in politics. And from their 1980 merger into the trendy Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) Party until 1994, no government could form without their participation.
In 2006, the CDA captured 41 seats and returned to power in a Liberal Party–led coalition in 2010, despite its decline to 21 seats. But on this election, it won a mere 5 seats, while the traditionally smaller Christian Union and Calvinist Reformed Political Party obtained 3 seats each. Never have Christians had so little representation in Parliament, with faith and ethics playing a negligible role in election debates.
Wilders, meanwhile, appealed to Dutch voters on the premise of “preserving the Christian character of the nation.” He campaigned under a slogan of “the Netherlands first,” combining anti-Muslim rhetoric with an unreservedly pro-Israel stance. Employing fear-based distortion of statistics on crime, he has called for the Netherlands to go away the European Union, for a halt to accepting asylum-seekers, for migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders, and for the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands with methods which are clearly unconstitutional.
His version of populist conservatism never refers to non-public faith.
Wilders has long been a far-right firebrand. In 2008, his film Fitna spurred death threats against him amid widespread criticism for its demonizing criticism of mainstream Muslim religion. At the time, I used to be in Egypt leading the Center for Arab-West Understanding (CAWU). We partnered with the Protestant Church within the Netherlands’s social motion arm Kerk in Actie, churches in Egypt, and Cairo’s al-Azhar, the foremost religious center within the Sunni Muslim world, to diffuse the crisis.
In 2011, Wilders was dropped at court for his aggressive, offensive, and abusive language against Islam. Though acquitted, the PVV combined his speech with patently false information on Christian persecution in Egypt. But in 2016, he was found guilty of insulting Muslims as a gaggle—not the faith itself—and inciting discrimination.
In this election cycle, he moderated his rhetoric—but not the PVV platform—to raised appeal to a various population. And after his victory, he presented himself because the potential prime minister for all Dutch people while warning that his opponents represented an “elite” who are attempting to maintain him out of presidency. Except for a temporary period between 2010–12, other political parties did just that. It is yet unclear if, this time, a government can form without him.
Italian academic Antonio Scurati has written against a return to populist power politics in Europe. Such politics, he says, are based on reducing complex societal problems to a nebulous enemy, witnessed previously within the rise of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who at the moment blamed all ills on socialists and Jews.
Today, populists world wide give attention to immigrants and, often, Muslims. If elections had been held across the continent, it is probably going that right-wing parties in other European nations would even have benefited from Hamas’s slaughtering of Israelis.
Though Wilders’s surge has caused a shock across Europe, the outcomes of those elections were partially expected. Dissatisfaction with traditional Dutch politics has grown exponentially, related to the increasing cost of living and the most important housing shortage since World War II. Migration issues collapsed the previous government, while frustration boiled against the Liberal Party’s promotion of the business class over lower income residents.
While accurate polling data about Christian voters doesn’t exist, the PVV populist revolt included the support of Christians who fear further change to cultural values within the Netherlands. However, Marietta van der Tol, head of Oxford University’s Protestant Political Thought project, doesn’t imagine that Wilders attracted large numbers of Christian votes, despite the eye given him by established Christian networks.
Christian values, nevertheless, have long been a part of the Dutch establishment, which was deeply religious until the Nineteen Fifties. Preaching tours by Billy Graham attracted tens of hundreds of individuals to stem the secular tide, and other evangelists followed in his footsteps. Evangelical churches were founded, largely taking from established Reformed congregations, and within the Sixties, the Evangelical Broadcasting Company strengthened conservative faith more widely. But secularization had already settled in as a social trend, and by 1966, one-third of Dutch residents didn’t consider themselves to be members of any church.
Today only 34 percent are members, while only 11 percent attend frequently.
But many churches are uncomfortable with Wilders’s victory. This is particularly true for many who support ministries within the Muslim world and are unhappy together with his culture of polemics.
Samuel Zwemer, a Nineteenth-century American Reformed missionary of Dutch origin, mobilized many Dutch Christians, especially doctors, nurses, preachers, and teachers, to serve within the Middle East. Their work helped establish Protestant churches and addressed the local widespread economic and academic poverty.
Over time, the main target shifted to intercultural and interreligious dialogue. Dutch ministries have realized that churches in minority positions can have no future in the event that they don’t engage in constructing peaceful relations with the Muslim majority. Wilders’s polemics, nevertheless, don’t fit with the standard inclusivity of Christianity, by which all are welcome no matter their background.
But not all is bleak politically. In 2019, the agrarian right-wing populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (FCM) formed. This election, it won 7 seats. Another latest party is the New Social Contract (NSC), formed in 2023 from internal splits inside the CDA. It won 20 seats. Both parties have clear Christian Democrat roots, and while the FCM appeals only to traditional values—not Christianity—the NSC speaks clearly in reference to Christian principles.
But while the PVV won 25 percent of the vote, 75 percent of the population prefer someone apart from Wilders. Migration policies will definitely change to turn out to be more stringent, while the following government can have to work hard to deal with social issues and regain the trust of the broader population.
Many Christians, nevertheless, have taken refuge in populist rhetoric, secular conservatism, or religious nationalism—all of which dilute the biblical message of affection, peace, and justice. Neglecting the gospel call to look after one’s neighbor, their political decisions are accelerating the exit of many from the church. Without a widespread and inclusive revival, Christianity within the Netherlands is predicted to dwindle further.
Wilders is just not the reply. He doesn’t pretend to be.
Cornelis Hulsman is the senior advisor of Center for Arab-West Understanding, a former member of the Christian Democratic Appeal, and joined the New Social Contract when it was founded in August. He served as a contract journalist for CT from 2000–12.
