The Dutch-speaking community, including farmers and traders, prospered in the former New Netherlands, dominating New York City, the Hudson Valley, and parts of New Jersey while maintaining a significant presence in southeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Connecticut, and Long Island.

Most worked first in English camps along the Hudson River to pay off their passage, paid by Queen Anne's government, before they were allowed land in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys.

They created numerous German-speaking Lutheran and Reformed churches, such as those at Fort Herkimer and German Flatts.

[4] During the American Revolution, a bitter internal struggle broke out in the Dutch Reformed church, with lines of division following ecclesiastical battles that had gone on for twenty years between the "coetus" and "conferentie" factions.

The divisiveness was also healed when the church sent members on an extensive foreign missions program in the early 19th century.

In the nineteenth century in New York and New Jersey, ethnic Dutch descendants struggled to preserve their European standards and traditions while developing a taste for revivalism and an American identity.

[7] Although some ministers favored revivals, generally the church did not support either the First or the Second Great Awakenings, which created much evangelical fervor.

In the 1857 Secession, a group of more conservative members in Michigan led by Gijsbert Haan separated from the RCA.

[9] Due to differences related to the adoption of the Belhar Confession, the removal of the conscience clauses related to the ordination of women, and place of LGBTQ people in the church, a number of congregations have left the RCA to join the Presbyterian Church in America, which is more conservative on these issues.

Contemporary arguments for the 'right' to assistance to commit suicide are based on ideas of each individual's autonomy over his or her life.

In humility, Christians can simply acknowledge this, and proceed...to share our own unique perspectives, inviting others to consider them and the faith that gives them meaning.

The General Synod in 2000 expressed seven reasons why the Church opposes it: The General Synod resolution expressed its will "to urge members of the Reformed Church in America to contact their elected officials, urging them to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment and to call for an immediate moratorium on executions.

[17] The following year, however, the General Synod essentially rescinded this statement and rebuked the 2012 delegates for demonstrating "a lack of decorum and civility," and usurping constitutional authority.

[17] In 2014, the General Synod recommended that the Commission on Church Order begin the process of defining marriage as heterosexual.

[19] Also in 2015, Hope College in Michigan, affiliated with the RCA, officially provided benefits to employees' same-sex spouses though the school continues to maintain a statement on sexuality that espouses a traditional definition of marriage.

[28] On 12 June 2017, the General Synod voted for a "recommendation [which] says, 'faithful adherence to the RCA's Standards, therefore, entails the affirmation that marriage is between one man and one woman.

'"[29] Also, in 2017, a classis in the RCA ordained the first openly gay and married pastor who had declared himself as such when he began the ordination process.

[30] In 2021, the RCA's General Synod voted in favor of a plan to allow congregations to leave the denomination, with their properties, and to allow remaining RCA congregations to choose their policy on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages with some supporting same-sex marriages and some opposing.

[35] In 1980, the RCA added a conscience clause to the BCO stating, "If individual members of the classis find that their consciences, as illuminated by Scripture, would not permit them to participate in the licensure, ordination or installation of women as ministers of the Word, they shall not be required to participate in decisions or actions contrary to their consciences, but may not obstruct the classis in fulfilling its responsibility to arrange for the care, ordination, and installation of women candidates and ministers by means mutually agreed on by such women and the classis" (Part II, Article 2, Section 7).

However, the vote by the General Synod had to be approved by a majority of the classes (a classis serving the same function as a presbytery).

The General Synod meets annually and is the representative body of the entire denomination, establishing its policies, programs, and agenda.

The Government, along with the Formularies and the By-laws of the General Synod, are published annually in a volume known as The Book of Church Order.

The ELCA's affirmation of the ordination of homosexuals as clergy in 2009 prompted some RCA conservatives to call for a withdrawal from the Formula of Agreement.

Along with their Formula of Agreement partners, the RCA retains close fellowship with the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC).