According to a recent news report, one in six clergy in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) and six other denominations is either an atheist or agnostic.
Klaas Hendrikse, who leads a PNK church in Gorinchem, wrote a book called Believing in a Non-Existent God which prompted the denomination to consider removing him.
However, having found that his views were so widely shared amongst clergy in the denomination they decided not to single him out.
In an interview with a BBC reporter, Mr Hendrikse said that "Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death."
He also stated that God is “a word for experience, or human experience” and that Jesus may never have existed.
Another priest in the same church, Kirsten Slattenaar, believes that Jesus was a “special man” but not God.
In another church in Amsterdam, Stroom West, one of its helpers, Rikko Voorberg, spoke of the need for the church to adapt to a postmodern society:
"The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society. It has to change to stay Christian. You can't preach heaven in the same way today as you did 2,000 years ago, and we have to think again what it is. We can use the same words and say something totally different."
Residents of the Dutch ‘Bible belt,’ however, do not share the same view.
Sytse de Jong, who is deputy mayor of Staphorst, said:
“When we get people into the Church by throwing Jesus Christ out of the Church, then we lose the core of Christianity. Then we are not reforming the institutions and attitudes but the core of our message."
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