Dutch Reformed conservatives at root of Canadian mumps outbreak

The Vancouver Sun - August 30, 2008

by Todd Douglas | The Search blog



A retired physician in Chilliwack vividly remembers the conservative Christian mushroom farmer who came to him in 1978 severely ill with polio, which was starting to paralyze his body.

The B.C. polio victim was a member of an arch-conservative arm of the Dutch Reformed church, which held it goes against God's will to accept vaccinations for polio or other infectious diseases, Dr. R. W. Van der Flier said in an interview.

The B.C. mushroom farmer had caught the polio virus from a visitor from the Netherlands who was a member of the same traditionalist Protestant Reformed denomination, which was at the time the focus of a severe polio outbreak in Holland.

That decades-old drama is echoing again this week. Fraser Valley Health officials have acknowledged an outbreak of mumps that originated in the Chilliwack area was linked to a Christian group that doesn't believe in vaccinations.

Of the more than 196 cases reported since the outbreak began in Chilliwack in February, 10 to 20 are still active. Half of the people who have been infected had not been immunized.

Van der Flier joins with other residents of Chilliwack, university professors and health researchers around the world in confirming that some members of the Reformed tradition in the valley, as well as in other parts of Canada and the Netherlands, continue to refuse vaccinations for polio, measles, rubella, mumps and other infectious diseases.

Although Fraser Valley Health officials have not named followers of the tradition as a source of the mumps outbreak, health officials in southern Ontario confirmed that some new cases of the viral disease in that province are tied to members of the "Netherlands Reformed Church" who shun vaccinations.

Eurosurveillance, a leading journal on infectious disease, also reported that a 2005 outbreak of rubella among unvaccinated Reformed Christians in the Netherlands had spread to hundreds of members of the same highly conservative Protestant sect in southern Ontario.

Van der Flier said his emergency treatment of the Dutch farmer appears to have saved his life.

Van der Flier, who is also of Dutch origin, still sees the man, whom he won't name out of patient confidentiality, walking around Chilliwack, with a limp.

At the time, Van der Flier said he scolded the man's pastor for preaching against vaccinations. "I had the minister in and gave him hell. I told him: 'Of all the ridiculous things to do, to bring polio into the country to which you'd immigrated.'"

A Vancouver Sun story at the time said other Reformed Christians had contracted polio in Alberta and Ontario in an extremely rare Canadian outbreak of a disease that had virtually been eradicated by mass vaccinations.

The story said that in the Netherlands in the 1970s, scores of members of Reformed groups that opposed vaccinations had contracted polio, with some dying. Many victims were children.

The anti-vaccination beliefs of conservative streams of the Dutch Reformed tradition remain a concern to public health officials in the Netherlands.


A report in the 2001 American Journal of Epidemiology reported 275,000 members of the tradition in that country (roughly one-eighth of the total) were refusing vaccinations.

The unvaccinated Christians were the only victims of a Dutch polio outbreak in the early 1990s. Virtually all were members of conservative or orthodox branches of the Reformed tradition that make their home in the Netherland's so-called Bible Belt, known as "De Bijbelgordel."

A Dutch government report says the existence of the anti-vaccination Reformed Christians, representing about two per cent of the country's total population, means the country cannot reach the highest protection from infectious diseases that is possible for a nation.

Telephone calls to a number of congregations and schools with Reformed links in the Chilliwack area were not returned this week.

The 2001 census says there are at least 115,000 people affiliated with the Reformed tradition in Canada, which has splintered into various denominations, many of which now welcome people of non-Dutch origins.

Other denominations with roots in the Netherlands include the Christian Reformed and Reformed churches. Some of these do not officially oppose vaccinations, although individual members might choose to do so.

Some secular Canadians also avoid them for various health concerns.

Adam Slingerland, of Chilliwack, grew up in an arch-conservative Dutch Reformed community in Alberta that shunned vaccinations.

Although Slingerland remains respectful of the Christian tradition founded by theologian John Calvin in Geneva in the 16th century, he is disturbed "hyper-Calvinists" in the Fraser Valley and elsewhere still hold what he considers dangerous beliefs against vaccinations.

"I was born into this particular community. I have deep personal feelings on the issue," said Slingerland, who remembers being in hospital when he was 13 for an unrelated problem and being allowed no visitors because there was a diphtheria outbreak and he had not been immunized.

"I was not immunized because my parents were taught that to do so was defying God, who you were to trust for your well-being. My faith had played no part in this decision, yet I was perhaps the most at-risk person of all," said Slingerland.

"One of my parents sincerely believed that God's care was imminent, and I have always respected that. This faith was amazing, but real. The other parent lived in dread of all that could happen, but felt it to be an obligation to follow the church line. I am afraid that that is the norm in this particular community."

Even though Slingerland, who is of Dutch origin and remains a devout Christian, said he doesn't want outsiders to attack conservative Reformed adherents in B.C. for their beliefs, he acknowledged it's a problem that some "hyper-Calvinists" don't think for themselves.

"I say that because, almost to a man, they believe that they will miss out on the grace of God. ... To them God is an austere God whom you had better serve in every way imaginable, or else."

Ultra-conservative Dutch Reformed generally believe they should put their faith in God to protect them, not in human medical techniques or voluntary programs like immunization.

Of any of his teachings, Calvin is most famous for urging followers to have strong faith that God has predestined their fate.


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