Gerrit Hendrik Kersten

Gerrit Hendrik Kersten (6 August 1882, Deventer – 6 September 1948, Waarde) was a Dutch Christian minister and politician. In 1907, Kersten founded the Reformed Congregations (Dutch: Gereformeerde Gemeenten). Eleven years later, in 1918, he had established the Reformed Political Party (Dutch: Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij) to realize his vision of "a Calvinist Netherlands without cinema, sports, vaccination and social security".^[1] He was the party's first member of the House of Representatives, being elected in 1922. He would remain in parliament until 1945.

On the evening of 10 November 1925, Kersten, staunchly opposed to Roman Catholicism, proposed an amendment to the 1926 budget for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Kersten's proposal came down to ending financial support for a Dutch office at the Holy See. The amendment was adopted the next day, with support from government party Christian Historical Union.

This led to the resignation of four Catholic government ministers and the fall of the first government of Hendrik Colijn. The fall of the cabinet became known as the Night of Kersten.

Kersten was a staunch critic of the policies of Colijn. The speaker of the Dutch parliament had parts of Kersten's contributions to debates edited in the Proceedings no less than thirteen times between 1922 and 1940. Kersten feared the rise of fascism and national socialism in the inter-war period, but saw fascism's authoritarian tendencies as a positive aspect and kept seeing socialism and Catholicism as greater evils.^[2]

During the Second World War, Kersten denounced resistance against the Nazis, claiming they were sent by God as punishment for desecration of the Lord's Day (Sunday). He also refused to sign a 1941 protest of the Convent of Dutch Churches (Dutch: Convent der Kerken) against the persecution of Jews during the war, and even went as far as to seek the Nazis help to keep his paper, Banier, in business. After the end of the war, a government committee branded him a collaborator and barred him from Parliament. He focussed on writing theological works. Kersten died three years later, in 1948.

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