The Christian Historical Union (, CHU) was a Protestant Christian democratic political party in the Netherlands. The CHU is one of the predecessors of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), into which it merged in September 1980. Party history History before 1908 In 1879, the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) was founded by a group of orthodox reformed Protestants, who had split from the main Dutch Reformed Church to form the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. It advocated equal funding for religious schools, universal suffrage and Protestant morality. Their main tactic was the anti-thesis between religious and non-religious parties, which meant that it sought to break the cooperation between liberals and Roman Catholics and to create an alliance between Catholics and Protestants. Furthermore, it was the first party with a strong centralised organisation – previously parties were organised as factions. The party was joined by many conservatives, who agreed with part of their program, many of whom were still members of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Anti-Revolutionaries were rather successful, winning 13 (out of 100) seats in the House of Representatives in the 1879 election, although not all MPs who campaigned as "Anti-Revolutionaries" were members of the ARP. After the 1888 election, the party formed a coalition cabinet with Anti-Revolutionaries and Catholics. In the 1891 election, the Catholic–Protestant coalition lost its majority. A liberal cabinet was formed. The liberal minister Tak proposed drastic changes to the census, which would result practically in universal male suffrage. The ARP supported an enlarged franchise. Several of these events caused considerable tension between the core of the ARP and the conservatives who supported them. These conservatives were opposed to Catholicism and dismissed the alliance between Catholics and Protestants; instead they wanted to form an alliance between Protestants, other conservatives and conservative liberals; The conservatives opposed the extension of suffrage, instead supporting divine sovereignty. They disagreed with the party having strong organisation and strong party discipline; instead they wanted to form a loose association of caucuses, with individualist MPs. Different views on the relationship between church and state formed the theoretic issue of contention between the groups; while the ARP adhered to sphere sovereignty, the conservatives advocated theocracy. For these reasons, a group of conservatives led by Alexander de Savornin Lohman left the party. The group was composed of members of the Dutch Reformed Church, many of whom had an aristocratic background. In the 1894 election they ran