REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA, a church founded by the colonists from the Netherlands, the first settlers of New York and New Jersey. Generally known from the be ginning in New Amsterdam until now as the Dutch Reformed Church, it was incorporated as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in 1819. This official title was changed to the Reformed Church in America in 1867. Its oldest organization is the church on Manhattan island, known as the Collegiate church of New York city, organized in 1628, the oldest Protestant church in the Middle States and probably the oldest Protestant church of settled ministry and continuous service in the United States. The first minister was Jonas Michaelius, who associated with himself Peter Minuit, director of the colony, and Jan Huygens, elders, and Sebastian Janz Krol, deacon, as the first consistory. The second church (1642) was built at Ft. Orange, now Albany; its first minister was Johannes Megapolensis, who also was missionary to the Indians. Other churches of this early time were (1654-6o) Flatbush, Flatlands, Bushwick, Gravesend and Brooklyn; (1659) Kingston; (166o) Harlem; (166o) Bergen. The passing of New Netherland from Dutch to English rule in 1664 retarded Dutch colonization and increase of the churches. Growth was constant, however, as the population spread through the surrounding regions. The work of Guliam Bertholf was es pecially notable from 1693 to 1724 in preaching, administering the sacraments and assisting organization in New Jersey. Theo dorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, who came from Holland in 1719, gave the Church remarkable service as leader in its spiritual life and in uniting the scattered churches into a denomination.
During the middle of the 18th century the life and progress of the Church were much affected by three questions under discus sion, dividing for the time the ministers and churches into two parties : whether the ministers for the Church must be educated in theology in the Netherlands, as was insisted upon up to this time, occasioning great scarcity of ministers; whether the Dutch language ought to be the exclusive language in the pulpit; whether the churches should continue under the authority, active from the beginning, of the Church in the Netherlands. The two parties were known as the coetus and the conferentie, the one favouring, the other opposing, the changes discussed. In 1764 Archibald Laidlie was installed as one of the ministers of the New York city church to preach in the English language. In 1766 a charter was secured, and in 177o a second charter, for Queen's college, now Rutgers university at New Brunswick, N.J., with provision for a chair of divinity. In 1771 John H. Livingston, graduate of
Yale and, in theology, of Utrecht, coming to the New York church as one of its ministers, proposed a Plan of Union which united the two parties and, with the consent of the Church abroad, laid the foundations for independent Church government in the United States. In the Revolutionary War at this time the minis ters and people of the Church were quite wholly on the patriot side. Among the ministers especially notable in the service of the new nation was Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, first president of Queen's college. Dr. Livingston became the Church's first pro fessor of theology in 1784, the divinity work at Queen's not having been established, and thus began what is now the New Bruns wick seminary, the oldest theological seminary in the country.
From this time the Church's growth was not at all confined to people of the Dutch blood, or to places of early Dutch settle ment. It extended somewhat westward with the moving popula tion. The greatest increase in its numbers and strength in the mid-west, however, has been through the coming since of many Dutch people, in protest against conditions in the State Church of Holland, to establish themselves in Michigan, Wiscon sin, Iowa and the Dakotas. Their two chief centres are Holland, Michigan, where they have Hope college and Western seminary, and Pella, Ia., where they have Central college. In foreign mis sion fields the work of the Church has been distinguished from the early part of the 19th century; pioneer work in India, China, Japan and Arabia continued as a denominational enterprise.
The Church is of the Calvinistic faith and government. It has a formal constitution, the Plan of Union (1771) being followed by adoption in 1792 of the Articles of Dort (1619) with ex planatory articles, these merged into the constitution of 1833, revised in 1874 and 1916. Its doctrinal standards are the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of the Synod of Dort. Its government is presbyterial with four assem blies or judicatories, the consistory (minister, elders and deacons), the classis, the particular synod and the general synod. The organ ization of the local Church differs from that of the Presbyterian Church in that the elders and deacons, the consistory, are the trustees. It has a very complete liturgy, the use of some of it being required, the Church being described as semi-liturgical.
The reports of 1927 show with the general synod, the particular synods of New York, New Brunswick, Albany, Chicago and Iowa, 40 classes, 741 churches, 8o8 ministers and 151,281 members, contributions for missions and benevolence $1,182,268, and for congregational purposes $3,905,956.