Gijsbert Haan had already been unhappy with the Reformed Church in America for years before 1857. He had settled with his family in Holland, Michigan in 1847, part of a larger wave of Dutch Calvinist emigration, and he preached openly that the church his community had joined was not sound. His specific complaints were concrete rather than abstract: the Reformed Church in America admitted anyone to communion regardless of what they believed, its hymnals included texts he judged unbiblical alongside the Psalms, catechism instruction for children was inconsistent from congregation to congregation, and some members kept up membership in Freemason lodges the secessionists considered incompatible with Christian faith.
In 1857, Haan and his followers submitted formal documents of secession to their governing classis, laying out those grievances. Church leadership rejected the documents at first, but one congregation left anyway in January 1857, and others followed through the year until four churches, roughly 130 families in all, about a tenth of the Dutch immigrant church membership in West Michigan at the time, had withdrawn. For two years the new body had no settled name at all. It adopted Holland Reformed Church in 1859, then Free Dutch Reformed Church in 1861, then True Dutch Reformed Church two years after that, before settling on Holland Christian Reformed Church in 1880 and finally Christian Reformed Church in 1904. Growing Canadian membership through the twentieth century led to the current name, Christian Reformed Church in North America, adopted in 1974.