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Much as Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte led dissenters from the Dutch Reformed Church to forested West Michigan in 1847 in search of religious freedom and economic opportunity, Scholte (1805鈥�1868) led settlers to the prairies of Iowa the same year. Vision, Conflict, and Controversy posits that unlike Van Raalte, who is regarded favorably in both the U.S. and the Netherlands, Scholte has largely been misunderstood and forgotten beyond the community that he founded.  As explained on the back cover:

鈥淸T]he prevailing view of Scholte among Reformed scholars has been negative. He has been accused of being a Labadist, a Congregationalist, and a pre-Millennialist 鈥� a soloist in all of his religious deviations. Unlike A.C. Van Raalte鈥� Scholte was not recognized as an organizer or a community builder and unifier. This volume refutes that view of Scholte, so effectively imprinted over time, and aims to spur scholarly interest in pursuing a broader and more thorough, cohesive, and critical study of his life and work. Herein contained are the building blocks for such a study鈥︹��

Vision, Conflict, and Controversy grew out of an international conference held in Pella in 2018, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of Scholte鈥檚 death.  The book is an anthology featuring 14 chapters by multiple authors from the Netherlands and United States, who explore topics such as:

• Scholte鈥檚 early life and the development of his views as a theologian;
• his role in the religious schism of 1834 in the Netherlands that ultimately led to the wave of immigration to the U.S.;
• his group鈥檚 journey across the eastern U.S. to St. Louis and then to Iowa;
• the significance of naming his community 鈥淧ella,鈥� after a city that in early church tradition had been a place of refuge for Christians fleeing Roman persecution;
• the complexity of his perspective on slavery, which included opposing its practice and expansion while also opposing abolition because of the conflict that it would cause;
• his active involvement in politics that included serving as a delegate to the 1860 Republican convention, meeting with Abraham Lincoln and a failed effort to obtain an ambassadorship;
• the origins of Orange City, Iowa, which was founded in 1870 by settlers from Pella led by Henry Hospers.

In addition, the script for the one-act play Letters from Pella, by Tom Vander Well, personalizes Scholte and his wife, Maria, and the issues that they and others faced in the community鈥檚 early years. The book closes with an illustrated appendix, originally by Susan Price Miller and updated by Lois De Haan Smith, that chronicles the first two generations of the family descended from Scholte and Maria, and Scholte and his first wife Sara.

The volume has been edited by George Harinck, Donald J. Bruggink and Lori Witt. Harinck is a professor at both the Theological University Kampen-Utrecht, where he is also rector, and the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and director of the Neo-Calvinism Research Institute Kampen and an honorary research fellow with Hope鈥檚 Van Raalte Institute; Bruggink was the founding editor of the Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America from 1968 to 2018 and has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Van Raalte Institute since 2004. Witt is an associate professor of history at Central College in Pella, where she is the Kenneth J. Weller Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts.

The contributing authors are Douglas Firth Anderson, Lois De Haan Smith, Michael J. Douma, George Harinck, Johan Hendrik Hegeman, Sara Huyser, Carl Nollen, Ronald D. Rietveld, Jan-Henk Soepenberg, C. 鈥淟eon鈥� van den Broeke, Michiel Jan van Diggelen, P.H.R. 鈥淩ob鈥� van Houwelingen, Tom Vander Well and Harm Veldman.

The Van Raalte Press facilitates publication of the scholarship of the A.C. Van Raalte Institute at 麻豆传媒官网, and was founded in 2007 by the institute鈥檚 second director, Dr. Jacob E. Nyenhuis. Established in 1994, the A.C. Van Raalte Institute specializes in scholarly research and writing on immigration and the contributions of the Dutch and their descendants in the United States. The institute is also dedicated to the study of the history of all the people who have comprised the community of Holland throughout its history. The institute is located in the Henri and Eleonore Theil and Jacob E. and Leona M. Nyenhuis Research Center at 9 E. 10th St.  More information about the Van Raalte Institute is available online at hope.edu/vri

Copies of Vision, Conflict, and Controversy: H.P. Scholte, Founder of Pella, Iowa are available for $30 and can be purchased at hope.edu/bookstore as well as through Amazon.