May 14, 2018
Mothers in Europe are an endangered species. Maybe that sounds too hyperbolic. But when motherhood is no longer widely respected and birth rates are falling well below replacement rate, it seems that Europeans as a race have chosen to die out. Tomorrow’s Europe will be a continent of fewer and older people, an individualised and […]
May 7, 2018
Something is missing in our European calendars. Last Saturday evening the Dutch celebrated the end of World War Two with an open-air royal concert held on the Amstel River flowing through the heart of Amsterdam. It was a glorious balmy evening, and an appropriate commemoration proclaiming the message: Pass freedom on! Yet the end of […]
April 30, 2018
Two swallows don’t make a summer, says a Dutch proverb. Yet two recent Dutch books do perhaps signal a significant climate change concerning Christianity in Europe. One is written by the publisher of the successful spirituality magazine Happinez. As mentioned in an earlier weeklyword, Inez van Oord argues in her book Rebible that ‘we have […]
April 23, 2018
My visit last week to Kyiv in Ukraine was the first since the Maidan Revolution four years ago. Walking around Maidan (Independence) Square in the centre of Kyiv, I felt I was witnessing an unfinished drama still being played out on the historic border between east and west. Information boards and sculptures filled the square, […]
April 16, 2018
Where do we begin to help shape Europe’s future? Surely with our own children, suggest Laura and Elina, two of my Schuman associates. Shouldn’t we be encouraging our children to understand the Europe in which they are growing up? Shouldn’t we be equipping them to think about the kind of Europe they would like to […]
April 9, 2018
In exactly one month today it will be Europe Day, May 9. So what’s the big deal? you may ask, along with 99% of Europeans who could not tell you what that day stands for. But if you have been reading weekly words for any length of time, you will know my perspective that this […]
April 3, 2018
A television audience of over three million witnessed a double resurrection miracle via a modern rendition of The Passion story of Jesus played across the city of Amsterdam on the eve of Good Friday last week. Beginning atop the Amsterdam Tower on the north side of the IJ River, the storyline followed Jesus and his […]
March 26, 2018
With the approach of Easter, concert halls, cathedrals and churches all across Europe have been resonating with the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion, often considered the greatest musical work ever composed. Last Wednesday, March 21, Bach’s birthday was celebrated by radio programmes the world over (‘Happy Bach Day’) and by thousands of […]
March 19, 2018
Saturday was St Patrick’s Day. And it was a great day for the Irish. Green-clad fans crammed into Irish pubs everywhere to watch their national rugby team play England in the final match of the Six Nations Rugby Championship. Although Ireland had already clinched the championship the week before, England was desperate to redeem their […]
March 12, 2018
Salons in Paris and coffeehouses in London, Vienna and other cities were the most important places for developing ideas that shaped public life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They offered informal space for interaction for people from different backgrounds without regard to rank. Women were usually the leading figures of the Parisian salons. The […]
March 5, 2018
Three months after moving into the heart of Amsterdam, Romkje and I find ourselves repeatedly both surprised and thankful. Surprised by the discovery of new life in unexpected places. Thankful for what some of our YWAM colleagues describe as a change in the spiritual climate of the city. As newcomers on the block, we have […]
February 26, 2018
An early church father’s exhortation to seek the common good comes as a refreshing reminder of our task as Christians today in a Europe unsettled by resurgent nationalism, populism and xenophobia. John Chrysostom–literally ‘the golden-mouthed’, in reference to his eloquent preaching–was the Archbishop of Constantinople at the beginning of the fifth century. Widely popular, he […]
