The Religious Feud That Started the Hope-Calvin Rivalry

Holland — Hope College and Calvin University have one of the longest-running college basketball rivalries in the country.

The two schools are wildly similar. Both are small, Christian, Division III schools, sit only about 30 miles away from each other and were founded just 10 years apart. Hope was officially chartered in Holland in 1866, and Calvin’s predecessor was founded in Grand Rapids in 1876. They were destined to be rivals from the start.

Today, it's their heated basketball rivalry that everyone talks about. But the two schools actually started feuding because of religion, and that story goes all the way back to 1857.

Hope and Calvin both came out of the Dutch Reformed Christian tradition. In the mid-1800s, thousands of Dutch immigrants were settling in West Michigan, including a large group led by a man named Reverend Albertus Van Raalte around Holland.

Many of these immigrants joined the Reformed Church in America, or RCA, which had already been an established Christian denomination in the U.S. for more than 200 years.

But not everyone was happy with it.

So in 1857, four churches made up of roughly 130 families broke away from the RCA and started their own denomination called the Christian Reformed Church, or CRC.

The split came down to a handful of religious and cultural disagreements. The people who formed the CRC thought the RCA had become too loose in some of its practices and “Americanized.” They wanted to maintain a stricter interpretation of their Reformed faith and preserve more of the Dutch religious traditions they had brought with them.

After splitting from the RCA, the new Christian Reformed Church needed a way to train ministers in its own religious tradition. So in 1876, they founded a theological school in Grand Rapids that would eventually become Calvin College, and later Calvin University.

However, Hope College, which had been officially chartered just 10 years earlier, remained with the RCA. And thus, a religious feud was born.

And the funny thing is, the two denominations still believe relatively the same things.

Both are Protestant. Both follow Reformed theology. Both believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, view the Bible as the Word of God and put a huge emphasis on salvation through faith in Christ.

The main differences between the two have historically been less about what they believe and more about how strictly and uniformly those beliefs should be applied.

The RCA developed into more of a "big tent" denomination, generally leaving more room for individual churches and members to stray from certain aspects of traditional Reformed beliefs and practices while still remaining part of the same church. The CRC traditionally put more emphasis on doctrinal consistency and maintaining a shared Reformed worldview.

Some of their specific disagreements centered around things like Sunday church services. The CRC traditionally believed worship should follow stricter Reformed practices, while the RCA became more open to different styles of worship.

They also had a ton of smaller disagreements that seem pretty silly today. One of the biggest issues that caused the original split was literally what music they were allowed to sing in church. The CRC believed worship should stick to singing the Psalms from the Bible, while the RCA allowed hymns.

They’ve also generally differed on issues like same-sex marriage and women in church leadership. It isn't as black and white as the RCA allowing these things and the CRC banning them. But generally, the RCA has taken a more relaxed approach and allowed individual churches more freedom, while the CRC has traditionally maintained stricter and more uniform rules.

By 1902, Hope and Calvin’s religious traditions had already been feuding for nearly 50 years, and things only got worse once they started playing basketball.

Hope established its men’s basketball team in 1902, and in 1917, a group of Calvin students decided to form a team of their own and challenge them. It did not go well.

Hope beat Calvin 51-8, and the Calvin students were actually reprimanded for forming the team without permission. Neither school really counts that game as the official start of the rivalry.

The first game they do count came in 1920, and Hope won that one too.

Things quickly got very heated. So heated, in fact, that from 1925 through 1929, the two schools had to stop playing each other because of fighting, verbal abuse, and property damage surrounding the games.

And remember, at the time, a lot of this fighting had very little to do with whose basketball team was better. It was all about religion.

Historical accounts even describe pastors using the results of Hope-Calvin games to support their own denomination’s position during Sunday sermons.

So yes, there was apparently a time when beating your rival on Saturday could become theological ammunition on Sunday.

Over the years, though, the religious hostility has cooled considerably. Hope and Calvin became friendlier, and many of the differences between the RCA and CRC softened as both denominations changed.

They are still two distinct churches with different histories, structures and approaches to their Reformed faith, but today, it’s mainly the basketball programs keeping the Hope-Calvin rivalry alive.

And while that rivalry doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, more than a century after Hope and Calvin first met on the court, the religious feud that separated the two schools in the first place has largely faded into history.