Van Raalte Institute Books

History Remembered

With the 30th anniversary of the college’s Van Raalte Institute on the horizon, some of the books most recently written or edited under its auspices provide a sense of its ongoing role not only chronicling but also enhancing the past and our understanding of it.

Named for Hope’s cofounder and established in 1994, the 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.

To facilitate the publication of the scholarship of the Van Raalte Institute, then-director Dr. Jacob E. Nyenhuis founded the Van Raalte Press in 2007, serving as editor-in-chief until September 2023. The result has been more than 30 titles (some with multiple volumes), including four published jointly with Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and three that have received a State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan.

A Place to Call Home: A Missionary Kid’s Tale

George C. Kraft II

Van Raalte Press, 2022

On one level, the memoir A Place to Call Home by retired kinesiology faculty member Dr. George Kraft reads like an “Eyewitness to History” adventure. The son of missionary parents in China, he was evacuated to India across the Himalayan Mountains aboard a U.S. Army Air Corps C-47 during World War II. Madame Chiang (Mei-Ling) Kai-shek once visited his school in Guling. When the hostile communist government took control in China, the family was interrogated and searched before being allowed to walk across a bridge to British Hong Kong. As a student and football player at Wheaton College, he prayed and sang — along with his teammates — with visiting evangelist Billy Graham. In 1963 he was one of three officers in charge of Checkpoint Charlie and helped secure the route traveled by President John F. Kennedy on his way to his “Ich bin ein Berliner” address.

The book, however, has a more personal focus. Subtitled A Missionary Kid’s Tale, it explores the immediate and lasting impact of being an “MK” growing up in the British-modeled boarding-school system far from family, sometimes for years on end.

The Canons of Dort: God’s Freedom, Justice, and Persistence

Eugene P. Heideman

Van Raalte Press, 2023

The Canons of Dort: God’s Freedom, Justice, and Persistence not only shares the final work of theologian Rev. Dr. Eugene Heideman but also serves as a tribute to him.

The Canons of Dort was developed during an international synodical meeting in the early 17th century in response to a theological controversy of the day. It still serves, along with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, as an authoritative doctrinal guide for churches in the Dutch Reformed tradition.

Heideman explores the historical context and the theological issues that led to the canons and makes a case for the canons’ continued relevance. The book was still in progress when he died at age 92 in 2022. It was prepared for publication by the Rev. Dr. Donald Bruggink, a longtime colleague who was the founding editor of the Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America.

A.C. Van Raalte: Pastor by Vocation, Entrepreneur by Necessity

Robert P. Swierenga

Van Raalte Press, 2023

This new account about the Rev. Dr. Albertus C. Van Raalte by historian Dr. Robert P. Swierenga draws upon information never before available, leading to what has been described as “the definitive biography” of the founder of Holland and cofounder of Hope.

Across its more than 600 pages, A.C. Van Raalte: Pastor by Vocation, Entrepreneur by Necessity chronicles Van Raalte’s life and achievements; the challenges and controversies he faced; and the roles that his personality, his faith and the times all played. Van Raalte, who lived from 1811 to 1876, led the Dutch immigrants who founded Holland in 1847 and later settled throughout West Michigan in search of religious freedom and economic opportunity unavailable to them in the Netherlands, where they were persecuted for dissenting from the state-approved church.

Tena Huizenga: Missionary to Nigeria, 1937-1954

Shawn Brix, with Paul Heusinkveld

Van Raalte Press, 2023

Tena Huizenga was a pioneering Christian Reformed Church missionary in Nigeria. Serving during World War II and after, she was an eyewitness to the monumental changes that swept through Africa in the post-colonial era. Originally published in 1994 as Aunt Tena, Called to Serve: Journals and Letters of Tena A. Huizenga, Missionary Nurse to Nigeria, the new edition by Shawn Brix, edited by Paul Heusinkveld ’72, includes additional annotations, maps and an index to help put her experiences into historical and geographic context.

Village Talk: A Country Merchant’s Memoir and Folk History

Ray Nies, Michael J. Douma, Robert P. Swierenga

Privately Published, 2023

Technically, Village Talk: A Country Merchant’s Memoir and Folk History isn’t a Van Raalte Press book — it was published privately on Amazon. But it was because of the institute, along with the resources of the Holland Museum, that editors Dr. Michael J. Douma ’04 of the Georgetown University faculty, and Dr. Robert Swierenga were able to bring to life a manuscript some 80 years old.

Village Talk provides insight into everyday life as experienced by its author, West Michigan resident Ray Nies, from the 1880s to the 1940s. The book chronicles his encounters with the people, places and changes across some seven decades as he grew up in Saugatuck and then spent the rest of his days in Holland, first working in and then running the family hardware store.

The Stories of Arthur King and Christine Iverson Bennett: Medical Missionaries in Mesopotamia, 1904-1916

Christine I. Bennett

Van Raalte Press, 2023

Dr. Arthur King Bennett was one of the pioneer missionaries of the Reformed Church in Ottoman Mesopotamia. He was joined at the Lansing Memorial Hospital in the port city of Basra by his wife-to-be, Dr. Christine Iverson.
Together, they served all comers, regardless of nationality, social status, or ability to pay, and lived adventures ranging from carving a life out of the Great Plains, to being captured by pirates, to racing through river-rapids with a band of thieves hot on their trail.