The party's support for female suffrage and the Catholic/Protestant Coalition were important reasons to create the HGS.
The direct cause was a series of demonstrations held in Amsterdam by orthodox Protestants, who opposed the lifting of the ban on Catholic processions in the Northern provinces.
The election was turbulent because the cabinet led by Charles Ruijs de Beerenbrouck had fallen over the diplomatic mission of the Netherlands to the Holy See, an issue that had divided Catholics and Protestants.
The HGS was an orthodox Protestant party with a strong nationalist tendency, based on two core ideas: virulent anti-Catholicism and theocracy.
The party wanted to, in their view, return the Netherlands to its original form: a Protestant nation, based on principles of the Bible.
It identified heavily with the Geuzen, the Protestant resistance movement which was crucial in Eighty Years' War against the Catholic Spaniards.
The party saw the 1886 Dutch Reformed Church split as a historic mistake as it weakened the power of the Protestant part of the population.
The CHU and to a lesser extent the ARP were reminded by the party of their original ideals, but they rejected the HGS' ideological orthodoxy.