February 24, 2014
The sun was setting on the little French town of Toulouges, near where the Pyrénées meet the Mediterranean coast, when my Dutch host jumped up and exclaimed, ‘Let me show you something before it gets dark!’ Hastily putting on our coats, we stepped out into the cool dusk air and set out towards the town […]
February 17, 2014
Not only did missionaries play a midwife role in the birth of the nation of New Zealand, as I wrote in last week’s WW; they also midwifed the rise and spread of democracy around the world, according to a persuasive 26-page article, Missionary roots of liberal democracy, published by the American Political Science Review. . […]
February 10, 2014
A high Celtic stone cross marks the spot in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands where Christian mission in the last land on earth to be populated by humans began two hundred years ago. The sermon preached on Christmas Day in 1814 to a large crowd of Maori was the start of a process that led […]
February 3, 2014
A sea-change is taking place in the way Europeans view prostitution. In an almost too-good-to-be-true-report, the European Parliament announced it will vote later this month on criminalising clients rather than the sex workers. Perhaps even more surprising is the news that the French parliament, led by Women's Rights Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (see photo) already voted […]
January 27, 2014
Today, Monday January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day to remember the victims of the genocide that resulted in the annihilation of six million Jews. For 69 years ago today, Soviet troops entering Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland were met by a ghostly gaggle of survivors, the ‘lucky’ ones left behind after 60,000 […]
January 20, 2014
Okay, so you’d love to be with us here in New Zealand right now enjoying the southern hemisphere summer. Well, if it’s any comfort, we are experiencing the tail-end of a cyclone that ripped across the Pacific Island of Tonga last week. Today it’s grey, rainy and cooler. As a second-best option, let me suggest […]
January 13, 2014
After flying for a day and a half from Europe, you may think you have reached the ends of the earth when you land in Auckland: ‘New Zealand, the world’s last bus stop’. But no, the journey hasn’t finished yet. For lying 60 kilometres off the coast from Auckland you can see on a clear […]
January 6, 2014
I shared the start of the New Year with almost three thousand young Europeans in exuberant dance and worship, wildly waving the flags of some of the 40 nations represented at the Mission-Net congress in Offenburg, Germany. For those from Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia especially, this was an unforgetable and unique experience of international […]
December 30, 2013
As we await the arrival of the New Year, perhaps enjoying a few quieter days to plan for 2014, the Greeks are getting ready to take over the presidency of the EU for the next six months. For many Europeans, that thought could be rather unsettling. If the Greeks can’t manage their own country, how […]
December 16, 2013
While Ukrainian political leaders talk simultaneously with President Putin in Moscow and the EU officials in Brussels today, Ukrainian church leaders are appealing to Western believers to support their country in prayer as it enters a new critical phase in the tug-of-war between East and West. Yesterday thousands rallied once more against President Viktor Yanukovich […]
December 9, 2013
Tomorrow morning the European Parliament will vote for the second time in six weeks on a resolution calling for abortion to be legalised across the EU and for compulsory sex education for children under four years. The procedure highlights why anti-Brussels sentiment is widespread across the EU, also among Christians. On the other hand, it […]
December 2, 2013
Human rights is a subject conservative Christians have often suspected as being a humanist plot distracting us from our responsibilities and duties to one another. The irony is that, outside of the Biblical framework, it is very difficult to say where they come from. Yet both Catholics and Evangelicals viewed the cause of human rights […]
