text: Foundation On 3 April 1879, Abraham Kuyper founded the ARP as part of the larger separate orthodox Protestant society within society. It was the first nationally organised political party in the Netherlands. An 1878 petition for equal payment for religious schools became one of the catalysts for the foundation of the political movement. In 1877, Kuyper had already written "Our Program" in which the political ideals of the ARP were written down (see below). Around the ARP the separate Protestant society began to grow: many Protestant schools were founded, a Protestant university (the Free University was founded in 1880), and a paper (De Standaard). In 1886, Kuyper broke free from the liberal Dutch Reformed Church (in Dutch: Nederlands-Hervormde Kerk) to found the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in 1892 (in Dutch: Gereformeerde Kerken Nederland).
  The ARP had one practical political goal: equalisation of payment between public and religious schools. It had one political strategy: the Antithesis between religious and non-religious parties, which meant that he sought to break the cooperation between liberals and Catholics and to create an alliance between Catholics and Protestants.
  1879–1917
  In 1879, thirteen anti-revolutionaries were among the hundred members of the House of Representatives, although not all were members of the ARP. During the period between 1879 and 1883, their numbers grew slowly, peaking at 19. After the 1884 election they had 21 members of parliament. In 1886 they won their first seat in the Senate.
  In the 1888 election, the ARP won 31.4% of the vote and 27 seats. A confessional cabinet was formed led by the anti-revolutionary Æneas Baron Mackay: it combined anti-revolutionary and Catholic ministers, joined by two conservative independents. Because the liberals still controlled the Senate, many of the cabinet's proposals met resistance there and the cabinet fell before the end of its four-year term.