Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little

break from the present to go exploring the past. Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history. Let's get started.

Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this

episode we are celebrating an anniversary historians love to do this. We like to

celebrate birthdates and we like to celebrate events that

were crucial in the life of the church and we just had the big 500th anniversary

last year but in 2018 and in 2019 we have the 400th anniversary

of the Senate of Dort.

Now it gets two years because it was convened in 1618, so let's celebrate the convening of the Synod.

And they finished up all their business and wrapped everything up in May of 1619.

So 2019 is also the 400th anniversary. So we have the 400th

anniversary in 2018 and the 400 anniversary in 2019. Now what happened at

Dort why is this a significant event in church history?

Dort is short for the city in the Netherlands known as Dortract. It's a Port City. And this Synod of the Dutch Church, but it also

engaged a number of folks from Great Britain, and these were Puritans. Many of them had been ousted from their posts at

Cambridge by Charles and by William Laud. So this was a bit of an international

Synod there at Dortract. It was called to deal with a problem that had bubbled up in the Dutch church.

This started back with Jacobus Arminius. Jacobus Arminius was born in 1560 and he died in 1609. His followers pulled together his

teachings and wrote up a document called the remonstrance. Now to remonstrate is sort of like to demonstrate only a little bit stronger.

And what were they remonstrating against? Well, they were remonstrating against what they

took to be the teachings of John Calvin on the doctrines of grace.

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