New Dutch government will prioritise higher spending

Significance His new government, which took a record 271 days to form, is a reiteration of the previous four-party coalition involving Rutte's centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the centrist liberals of Democrats 66 (D66) and two Christian democratic parties, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and the more conservative Christian Union (CU). The coalition deal promises a significant shift away from the austerity policies of previous governments. Impacts The collective rise of the far-right vote means the far right will continue to worry centrist parties and thus influence government policy. Higher structural spending in education should improve medium-to-long-term productivity development and output. The government promises to strengthen cyber capabilities in order to crack down on intellectual property theft.

The New Religious Political Right in Neo-Apartheid South Africa

This article argues that, in similar ways that scholars such as Kaye (1987) and Apple (1990) have respectively demonstrated how post 1970s America and Britain fused the neo-liberal discourse of free markets with the neo-conservative Christian discourse of moral rightness to found a New Right, we can apply this analytical model in post-apartheid/neo-apartheid South Africa. The aim of this analytical comparison is to support the broad claim that the article makes about the rise of the New Right in contemporary South Africa as directly related to the fusion of neo-Pentecostal Christianity with neoliberal economics in very salient ways. Using discourse analysis, the article demonstrates how the New Right in South Africa also draws from the language of crisis to justify a response that brings together the interlocking of race, religion, and neoliberalism. The paper’s main argument is that, a different type of New Right is emerging in current day South Africa, one that is not simply the purview of whitenationalism, but has main appeal also within the black middle-class.

Ownership Versus Partnership Parenting: Parenting Styles Within the Homeschooling Movement

Scholars of the family agree on four main parenting styles, varying along two axes: responsiveness and control. Parental involvement and child autonomy fall under the control axis and are assumed to have an inverse relationship; where parental involvement is high, child autonomy is assumed to be low, and vice versa. Drawing on 22 in-depth interviews and participant observation at five homeschooling conferences, we examine the dominant parenting philosophies and practices of conservative Christian homeschoolers (which we call “ownership parenting”) and secular unschoolers (which we call “partnership parenting”). We demonstrate that the inverse relationship between parental involvement and child autonomy is not present in partnership parenting, which is marked by both high parental involvement and high child autonomy. Unschooling thus represents an empirical case against the theoretical conflation of parental involvement and child autonomy; a new expanded typology is thus posited that divides the control axis into two distinct axes.

Gewetensbezwaarden onder vuur

Conscientious objectors under fire. Vaccine refusal among orthodox-Protestant soldiers in the Dutch Armed Forces, 1945-1950 During the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949), the Dutch government deployed 220,000 soldiers in the Indonesian archipelago. Among them was a group of conservative Christian soldiers who refused vaccinations against smallpox for religious reasons. Initially this caused no problems, but the situation changed after the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic in Indonesia in 1948. The non-vaccinated soldiers could not return to the Netherlands due to international restrictions. Although compulsory vaccination was abolished in 1939, some soldiers were forced to accept vaccination. In the Netherlands, representatives of the Reformed Political Party (SGP) and the conservative churches accused the Army of illegal actions. The central question in the debate was the space for religious minorities and divergent views on vaccination in the Dutch Armed Forces. This article studies the process of negotiation between the Dutch Armed Forces and the political and ecclesiastical representatives of this conservative religious group. Finally, this article argues for more research into religious diversity in the Dutch Armed Forces.

Conservative Christianity and Intimate Partner Violence in Brazil

Based on empirical research in a women’s shelter in São Paulo, Brazil, this article examines how ‘secular’ professionals and service users negotiate conservative Christian faith, gender roles and domestic violence. The article demonstrates how staff use theological arguments with feminist interpretations of religion, in order to better communicate with abused women of faith. A key finding is that both the religious service users and the ‘secular’ professionals discover it is not religion per se which allows for situations of violence, but rather the patriarchal way in which conservative Christianity is taught in some churches, ultimately functioning as a method of controlling women. Moreover, through feminist consciousness-raising and attention to women’s rights, some abused women of faith find ways of negotiating the violence they experience, leading to an understanding of it as both personal and political.

Conservative Christian Persecution Discourse and Support for Political Violence: Experimental Evidence from the United States

International Relations scholarship on religious freedom points to religious persecution as a major driver of political violence around the globe. If correct, the perceived persecution of conservative Christians in the United States (U.S.) may contribute to the radicalization of individuals who self-identify as conservative and Christian. Yet, in focusing on country-level indicators, previous empirical research on the “religious freedom peace” is generally silent on the role of individual-level perceptions in the formation and mobilization of grievances. This article represents a first attempt to fill this gap. As such, it asks if the religious freedom discourse articulated in conservative American media contributes to the radicalization of its domestic consumers through the cultivation of perceptions of persecution that are divorced from the generally high levels of religious freedom otherwise experienced in the U.S. Although the results of an original online survey experiment demonstrate that persecution discourse does indeed shape perceptions of threat to religious liberty, I find no support for the idea that it also leads to increased support for political violence, either directly or indirectly through misperceptions of persecution.

Abstinence-Only and the Struggle to Define Sex Education

As Chapter 5 argues, conservative Christian abstinence-only advocates learned a great deal from the liberal Protestants and comprehensive sexuality education they rejected. This phase of sex education, often defined by the struggle between competing versions of sex education, began with the emergence of abstinence-only education in the 1980s. After years of opposing sex education, conservative Christians like Tim LaHaye developed their replacements. Supported by—and supporting—the newly developed Christian Right and the evangelical pro-family movement, these programs espoused chastity before marriage and omitted information on contraceptive benefits and the diversity of sexual behaviors and identities. It was no longer a question of whether sex education belonged in schools, but rather which type would be taught. Conservatives, too, had learned how to translate religious values into secular spaces in order to gain a bigger audience for their concerns and values.

The New Morality of Comprehensive Sexuality Education

Out of family life education grew comprehensive sexuality education, which taught sexuality as a public health topic and included information on contraceptives and, eventually, sexual diversity. Interactions between the National Council of Churches and Mary Steichen Calderone, a Quaker and public health professional, led to the founding of SIECUS in 1964 as the leader of comprehensive sexuality education. Chapter 4 argues that the “new morality,” a liberal theological trend also known as situation ethics, shaped comprehensive sexuality education and incited the intense conservative Christian opposition known as the “sex education controversies.” The new morality, with its rejection of absolutist interpretations of right and wrong behavior, tipped sex education further toward progressive sexual values. Responding to the new morality of comprehensive sexuality education, conservative Christians protested that children would learn an “anything goes” curriculum that violated their beliefs in modesty and the exclusive place of sexuality within a monogamous, heterosexual marriage.