Christian Reformed Church

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And I had the idea that Clark was a good Friesian name. :eek:

The Dutch would be de Klerk. The Friesian would be Clerksma or Clerkenga.

Let me see: Errr, (rolling the "r") Scotje De Klerk. Yep, sounds Dutch to me.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that Abraham wasn't a Dutch name. It sounded so Dutch when my Grandfather used to pronounce it. There's Aahbrahaahm, and Daahvid, and so on. I couldn't really get the hang of the Dutch name for Acts, though. That sounded so unBiblical. Handelingen? Oh well.
 
..or Clarkski...oh yeah, they lived on the other side of the river in Grand Rapids. :p
 
We lived on the West Side for 2 glorious years after we were married, and I interned at 7th Reformed under J.R. de Witt. In the midst of Poles and Lithuanians (we often walked in the Lithuanian cemetery), there were, at one time 2 RCA and no less than 5 CRC churches in about 10 square miles! 2 of the CRCs have closed, including one which was, at one time, the largest in the denomination, Alpine Avenue.
 
I wasn't trying to imply that if you're Dutch then Presumptive Regeneration kicks in. I was trying to hint at the fact that my fathers in the Reformed faith were indoctrinated in the rich high Dutch church language, and sometimes it just doesn't translate well. I sometimes got the notion in my head that the Dutch name for the book of Acts meant "manual labour". It just sounded like that to someone not appreciating the language as much as my fathers did.

As I said, most if not all the elders of our church had no more than a high-school education. They came here knowing the high Dutch church language and all the doctrines in that language. But here in Canada they had to quickly adapt to the English language. Some of the things they had taken for granted suddenly became hard to explain to the new generation of English-speaking youth. And they were often not sufficiently equipped for that.

I recall one family visit when my father tried to get the elders to talk to us in English so we could understand. He tried, but he couldn't do it. They could talk English a little, but did not know the right words to translate the right questions into our language. We were learning everything in English, in school and in catechism and in church services. Some elders had a very hard time with that change. What used to take merely saying it in Dutch, because the words themselves had so much meaning and heritage behind them, now required the very hard task of explaining it in English which didn't have that richness.

Its not as though they didn't try; its more that they had so many things to contend with at the same time. They had to build a living for themselves, they suddenly had a 50's and 60's set of young people to deal with, they tried to build Christian schools, and they were trying to learn the doctrines of the church in the English language to the same depth they had learned in the Dutch. Looking back I would think it was quite overwhelming for them.
 
Man, am I sorry to hear that the CRC is heading into trouble...

I was hoping that they may have been a possible refuge for those of us in the sunk PCUSA that are longing for a Reformed home.

Too bad!
 
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