March 23, 2009
As the train carried him homewards, the young Greek doctor thought back on the words of the veteran missionary speaker from South Africa: ‘Healthy people walk vertically and look horizontally, but sick people lie horizontally and look vertically.’ Francis Grimm, founder of Hospital Christian Fellowship, had been challenging his audience to see why sick people were […]
March 16, 2009
Ten suspected human traffickers went on trial today in Zwolle, near where I live, as a result of an African pastor friend of mine breaking voodoo curses over young Nigerian girls forced into prostitution.
March 9, 2009
Winston Churchill put it this way: The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. I like to say it as follows: Short memories breed short-sightedness. Or it’s corollary: Long memories breed far-sightedness. Both these quotes express the reason why my wife and I, each summer, jump in a van, […]
March 2, 2009
The tram arrived at our stop in East Berlin. All seventy of us poured out (it was a long tram). We followed our young guide across the tracks and entered a forest of apartment blocks. And ‘blocks’ they were. Like up-ended egg-cartons. Stalinist baroque, that style was called, all across the old Communist world. This […]
February 23, 2009
Whistleblowing is a thankless job. Ask Paul van Buitenen, now sitting in the European Parliament as a one-man party, Europa Transparant. Shortly before I first met him in Brussels ten years ago, his exposure of corruption and cronyism involving Former French Premier, Edith Cresson, had caused the resignation of the whole of Jacques Santer’s European […]
February 16, 2009
It happened again last week in Berlin. When I asked a German congregation to think of a prominent European personality who had converted to Islam, immediately the name ‘Cat Stevens’ was called out. Now, how long ago was that? It was in 1977-over thirty years ago!-that singer Cat Stevens converted to Islam at the height […]
February 9, 2009
Nobody quite knows which saint gave his name to February 14, the day on which lovers traditionally send each other Valentine’s cards. Biographies of two Valentines honoured on this date, from the second and third centuries, offer no romantic connections. Geoffrey chaucer, author of Canterbury Tales, may have created the Love-factor in the 14th century […]
February 2, 2009
As we drove through the narrow paved streets of the Old City of Riga, Latvia’s capital, we passed shops where angry protestors had smashed windows and looted just two weeks ago. My host’s apartment was just off the Cathedral square, where 10,000 demonstrators had protested peacefully against economic mismanagement and demanded new elections. Most of […]
January 26, 2009
This summer, my wife Romkje and I invite you to join us as we head off once more around Europe in search of people and movements who shaped Europe. As with past years, we start in Amsterdam, city of Rembrandt, Abraham Kuyper and even the Pilgrim Fathers. After travelling around Holland, through Germany and the […]
January 12, 2009
The road winds through English woods and fields in the countryside north of London, and eventually circles in front of the grand entrance of a sprawling red-brick country mansion. A forest of chimneys and turrets sprouts from its steep shingle roof. At first glimpse I thought, thank heaven I’m not responsible for the maintenance of […]
January 5, 2009
It’s amazing what journalists come up with when prospects are down. We’re facing crises on many fronts: credit, ethics, energy, environment… not to forget, of course, the Middle East. Yet some writers see potential for good. This year will mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of […]
December 14, 2008
• European leaders came to an historic agreement in Brussels last week to limit co2 emission levels to help save the environment. • Just a few days earlier, Christian scientists and philosophers met to discuss the relationship between faith and science at the University of Leiden in Holland. • Also near Leiden, in 1642, two philosophers met in […]
