May 21, 2007
The oft-quoted saying-‘In essentials, Unity; in non-essentials, Liberty; in all things, Charity’-has been attributed wrongly to various well-known historical figures, including St Augustine and melanchthon, Luther’s colleague, and John Wesley. Last week I wrote about the Together for Europe event in Stuttgart which admirably reflected the spirit of this saying. How thankful we can be […]
May 14, 2007
A growing ecumenism of the heart is clearly one of the signs of hope in Europe today. This was demonstrated most tangibly among the 2000 leaders from 240 European movements and communities who gathered in Stuttgart at Miteinander für Europa (Together for Europe) over the past few days. This was no search for a 'lowest […]
May 7, 2007
In the face of the torture and murder of three Christians this past month in Malatya, we must offer the Turkish people the same trust asked of them during the Reconciliation Walk, writes Matthew Hand, a specialist in Turkish history. Hundreds of Christians visiting Turkey in the 1990's on the Reconciliation Walk to mark the […]
April 30, 2007
‚ÄòMummy, did the world ever forgive Germany?‚Äô asked Zsusanna‚Äôs eight-year-old son. He had been watching Discovery Channel programmes on the Second World War. ‚ÄòYes, of course,‚Äô his mother replied. ‚ÄòThen they‚Äôll also forgive us Serbs, won‚Äôt they?‚Äô he said with a relieved sigh. Stories like this, shared at the Women in Leadership conference held near […]
April 26, 2007
Europe needs three-dimensional people: rooted in the past, anticipating the future, yet living in the present. Such are People of Hope. For hope is founded on the past, focussed on the future and fleshed out in the present. Three-dimensional Europeans ground their hope on the God who has revealed himself in history‚Äìhis character, his acts, […]
April 2, 2007
The sixth of a series from Paul‚Äôs time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 ‚ÄòThe winds roared round about us, and whistled as distinctly as if it had been a human voice. The ship not only rocked to and fro with the […]
March 26, 2007
The fifth of a series from Paul‚Äôs time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 As the year 1727 opened, the little town of Herrnhut was a nest of quarrelling and bickering dissidents. The original rag-tag bunch of refugees had been allowed to […]
March 19, 2007
The fourth of a series from Paul‚Äôs time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 In the back streets of the small Dutch town of Naarden, twenty minutes’ drive outside of Amsterdam, is the modest mausoleum of a man known globally as the […]
March 12, 2007
The third of a series from Paul’s time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 The crowd packed into the Bethlehem Chapel listened in rapt silence to the clear, authoritative voice of Jan Hus. He was reading the Bible and preaching in their […]
March 5, 2007
The second of a series from Paul‚Äôs time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 When the request came from Moravia for missionaries, the emperor and the patriarch knew immediately who to send. The Moravians were Slavs who had migrated from the East […]
February 26, 2007
This WW begins a series from Paul‚Äôs time to today via the Moravian church, in preparation for the Festival of the Nations in Herrnhut, May 25-28, 2007 When Paul for the first time stepped ashore in ‚ÄòEurope‚Äô around the year AD50, he had no notion of the continent as we do today. The classical world […]
February 19, 2007
Paul‚Äôs shipwreck on the island of Malta in AD60 was probably no accident in the providential scheme of things. Whether or not the islands were then converted to Christianity‚Äìwhich tradition holds but Luke doesn‚Äôt actually say‚Äìthe Maltese are proud of their direct association with the apostle. Today the small archipelago remains overwhelmingly Catholic. Both divorce […]
