June 15, 2020
How do you change peoples’ attitudes? The outcry concerning racism over the past weeks in western countries with colonial pasts has certainly resonated with millions and triggered public debate. Sober journalism has produced various analyses of endemic racism long overdue for exposure, reflective dialogue, institutional reform and changed attitudes: in employment, housing, medical services, police […]
June 8, 2020
Global outrage against racism triggered by the public murder of George Floyd reveals a broad- and deep-seated frustration concerning systemic injustice. Protests in Australia and New Zealand, Britain and France, the Netherlands and Germany, Italy and Ireland, Canada and Brazil, not only expressed solidarity with Black America but highlighted tensions in their own multi-cultural societies. […]
June 1, 2020
Pentecost marks the birth of the Jesus movement that is still sweeping the world beyond the awareness of most Europeans, most dramatically in our lifetime. It was a supernatural event, like the Incarnation and the Resurrection, neither planned nor caused by humans. Although the disciples had been told to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit […]
May 25, 2020
As the corona crisis hit in late March, TIME magazine ran an article by theologian Tom Wright with the provocative title: Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus: It’s Not Supposed To. Wright dismisses as ‘the usual silly suspects’ any idea that God has sent this pandemic in judgment or punishment. Actually that is how […]
May 18, 2020
Almost overnight, thanks to a deadly unseen intruder, a new category of people emerged a few weeks ago whom we now call ‘essential workers’. While everyone else stayed safely at home, these new heroes (wo)manned the barricades and ran the trenches by risking the hospital wards, driving public transport, delivering mail and orders-by-post, stocking the […]
May 11, 2020
‘Birth’ was commemorated in diverse ways this weekend. Yesterday, Mothers Day, we honoured those who birthed us with flowers, cards, gifts and skyped messages of appreciation. Saturday was Europe Day, the 70th anniversary of the event which birthed the movement for European unity and peace, recognised in Brussels but only patchily across the 27 member […]
May 4, 2020
This week, Europeans celebrate the end of the Second World War seventy-five years ago in different ways. For some, like the British and the Russians, it is celebrated as victory. For others, as liberation by the Dutch, Belgians and the French. Yet for others, it marked the sad trading of one occupier for another – […]
April 27, 2020
At 10 am today, citizens of The Netherlands will stand on balconies, at windows and in gardens across the nation to sing together the mysterious words of the first verse of the world’s oldest national anthem, the Wilhelmus. For this is Koningsdag, King’s Day, the birthday of King Willem Alexander, when traditionally the Dutch create […]
April 20, 2020
One of the ‘good’ things about our current crisis, I read this week, is that we’ve stopped worrying about climate change. We now worry about how to survive house arrest with kids and spouses. How to prevent (grand)mother from dying in fearful isolation in her nursing home. How to keep up the home schooling routine. […]
April 13, 2020
Governments around the world are hoping special apps will help trace Covid-19 contacts and thus contain the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, the following four ‘apps’ I often talk about, to suggest how God has been at work in the European story, can perhaps have special meaning for us this Easter. Firstly, the ‘God’s will’ […]
April 6, 2020
Yesterday was a different sort of Palm Sunday with church doors closed all over the world. No children paraded into church with palm branches, for example, despite creative efforts no doubt made to celebrate online. With more time than usual to reflect, let’s consider an often-overlooked aspect of Holy Week which offers a timely lesson […]
March 30, 2020
Belshazzar’s feast was a great display of wealth, power and hedonism with his wives and concubines entertaining a thousand guests using the golden and silver utensils from the temple in Jerusalem. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the wall. Summoned to explain the riddle of the writing on the wall, […]
