Youth Work for Baby Boomers: Developments in the Netherlands Reformed Church in the Twentieth Century

This article deals with the first decades of the Reformed Youth Council of the Netherlands Reformed Church. It was founded in 1941 to challenge young people in local congregations to join the public task of the national Protestant church. Because religious youth work had been left to particular organisations for many years previously, tensions between them and the new umbrella movement had to wait until after World War II to be resolved. Meanwhile, all parties were faced with the general decline of traditional club life and the call for ‘open youth work’ in the form of societal criticism and activism in the ‘roaring sixties’. Curiously, both the orthodox wing of the church and the evangelical Youth for Christ movement succeeded in keeping young people committed to personal faith. Most baby boomers, however, would find their religious place outside organised religion.