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Abstract

This article examines the debate on ‘sociologisation’ in the Dutch Church Province in the immediate decades after 1945, first of all by reviewing the subject positions of Laeyendecker and Dols in relation to recent shifts in international historiography. Even though it endorses various of Laeyendecker’s lines of reasoning, moreover, it argues that his contribution rests on several misunderstandings of both the intentions and analytical core of Fact Factory (2014). It also claims that Laeyendecker’s sociological interpretation of the religious crisis of the long 1960s leaves too little room for historical problematisation. It suggests, instead, a historicising of secularisation as a grand narrative and ‘crisis’ as a vital Deutungskategorie. In that sense, ‘crisis’ appears as an analytical category, too, by means of which sociologists of religion denoted a demise of traditional religiosity, signified that ecclesiastical structures were malleable, opened up sociological perspectives to decision making, and justified blueprints for reform.