(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Servants of Kingdom is a modest abridgement and translation of a dissertation which, at its 1999 publication, was greeted with a breadth of interest that would surprise most North-American scholars. It engages a small but spirited field of scholarship on Netherlands Reformed ministry as a and as a corps (in which concept of professionalization figures prominently), as well as larger literature on clergy of other state sanctioned churches.Scholars tend to divide into two camps regarding timing of professionalization of clergy: those who find significant evidence thereof in latter decades of Republic (to 1795) and those who argue that most important developments did not occur until well into nineteenth century. David Bos differs--obliquely but categorically--with both camps. Bos argues that by a rigorous application of a conventional definition, professionalization was stymied until 1918 formation of Dutch Ministers' Union, first body which satisfied a professional sine qua non : an autonomous association for concerted action in group interest (25). More importantly, however, Bos rejects such conventional definitions. Instead, he offers an approach adapted from social sciences, under which a profession is understood as a figuration, 'a structured and pattern of interdependent people'; professionalization is, thus, the developmental history of profession. Consequently, Bos examines changing relationships among subsets within corps itself, and between it and other collective actors: clientele, educators, state, and closely professions (26, 27).Bos wholeheartedly embraces a Weberian understanding of social position as consisting of both Klasse and Stand , a distinction which seems to him almost to have been designed especially for our purpose (13). It is social position of ministry (both as calling and population) which supplies what scholars call red thread of his work: carrying reader throughout is an assessment of gains and losses to what one might call ministry's portfolio (my term, not his) of political, social, cultural, and economic capital.Bos begins his study with founding of United Kingdom of Netherlands and policies of William I, following Napoleonic rule. During this period, responsibility for ministers' base salaries were accepted by state. Though state also deprived of authority and autonomy at highest levels of church governance, that was more than offset by gains resulting from stipend, in autonomy from local elites and an independence from congregation which many cherished (139), as well as by capital derived from attentions of a state seeking a dance partner suitable for nation building. The accession of William II marked beginning of gradual withdrawal of state support for church and, with it, decline of portions of status-portfolio in which state support had buoyed. Other indexes rose, however. In higher education, for example, integration of theology students into body of aspirants to other professions, connected them to political, cultural, and (to a lesser extent) economic elites, and ministers were accepted into high society (213). …