Secularism, autochthony and Christian nostalgia: the ambiguous quest for ‘Dutchness’ seen through the lens of religion

Religion has always played a key role in notions of Self and Other in the Netherlands. In the last fifty years or so however, religion has been increasingly important in the form of its absence, as ideas about Dutchness came to be strongly informed by a politics of secularism. Based on discourse analysis and fieldwork, I show in this paper that this secular-informed quest for Dutchness has continued to make religion important as ‘significant Other’. Yet, the ways in which religion has been perceived, and the role that different religions – notably Christianity and Islam – have played, have shifted in this regard. Strikingly, in recent years the search for national belonging has increasingly mobilized Christianity as a kind of cultural heritage, bringing religion back into Dutch definitions of self. This appropriation of religion, however, excludes Islam and only accepts Christianity as a nostalgic heritage (hence harmless), rather than a lived faith.