February 8, 2021
Religion and politics can make for a toxic mix, as we have sadly seen in recent days. Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, once advised: ‘Don’t mix religion and politics. You mix religion and politics, you get terrible politics and even worse religion.’ And yet until his premature death just months […]
February 1, 2021
Weekly Word generally focuses on European issues but today I want to explore responses to the global influence of the American Civil War of Words. The credibility of American evangelicalism globally has been hugely damaged over the past four years, especially among youth. Politicians in other nations, like Italy, Hungary and Brazil, have been emboldened […]
January 25, 2021
How the world has changed since my last Weekly Word before Christmas last year! Four weeks ago today, Romkje and I stepped out through the security fence of our managed isolation hotel in Auckland into a world of hugs, handshakes and unrestricted gatherings. Here we began to catch a glimpse of the post-corona society: with […]
December 21, 2020
After a surreal 35-hour journey from Amsterdam, Romkje and I were entering New Zealand this time last week as I write these words. This is day eight of our 14-day isolation period. Our journey led us through the ‘ghost-towns’ of Schiphol, Singapore and Auckland airports and onto planes where flight crew outnumbered passengers. Empty seats […]
December 14, 2020
Time for one last Kuyper analysis before the centennial year of 2020 expires. None-too-early, a centenary Kuyper-magazine has just appeared in the Dutch shops, edited by Kuyper-specialist George Harink of the Free University. Reading the various articles in this BRAM-publication (Kuyper’s familiar name, short for Abraham), featuring well-known Dutch politicans, academics and public figures, reminded […]
December 7, 2020
Family get-togethers at Christmas and New Year this year will be greatly restricted by official COVID-19 guidelines. Year-end school vacations will be lengthened in several countries to increase social distancing, creating more pressure for parents struggling to juggle job and family at the best of times. And yet according at least to research in Britain, […]
November 30, 2020
A year ago this week, a volume entitled Is God a populist? was launched to prompt conversations among Christian leaders and policy-makers about the political phenomenon of populism. An initiative of the Norwegian Christian think tank Skaperkraft, the book contained contributions from experts across Europe to prod Christian leaders to consider how populists seemed to […]
November 23, 2020
To my surprise, that man’s name kept popping up in different events I visited online this past week. He could help us recover social trust; or find new people-centred business models; or put politics back where it belonged without seeping into every corner of our lives. In short, he could still mentor us through the […]
November 16, 2020
Last week the world lost a moral leader who was respected by many from different religious and secular circles for his wisdom on contemporary issues. Lord Jonathan Sacks, whom I had the privilege of meeting in the Houses of Parliament at the launch of National Marriage Week in 2007, was buried privately last Sunday within […]
November 9, 2020
One hundred years ago this week, thousands lined the streets to farewell the man they had once voted their most popular countryman. • He had started their country’s first modern political party and served as their prime minister 1901-1905. • He had shaped education by championing a distinctive multicultural diversity of schools and founded the […]
November 2, 2020
Lost for many against the ‘horror’ background of halloween, global pandemic, American elections and a looming no-deal Brexit was the commemoration of Reformers’ Day on October 31. For on this day in 1517, ‘Hallowed Eve’ (hence Halloween) in the church calendar, the eve of All Saints Day, the reformer Martin Luther posted his 95 theses […]
October 26, 2020
Why are we Christians not usually more positive about life? about the future? about people who are different from us? If we believe in a sovereign God who is working out his purposes in history, why are we so quick to adopt gloomy end-time scenarios or even embrace conspiracy theories multiplying these days via social […]
