November 16, 2015
The week already began on a pessimistic note. On Monday, Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, confessed his personal fears of the European project being torpedoed by rising nationalism. He talked of a perfect storm gathering, with the refugee crisis following hard on the heels of the economic crisis. And then came Friday […]
November 9, 2015
It’s time to rekindle the old debate about religion and politics. Only this time let’s talk about ‘spirituality’ and politics. Which, for some reason, seems more cool and less offensive. Not that there’s any real difference except in popular perception, which is I suppose what shapes language in the long run. Here are some definitions […]
November 2, 2015
‘Having ignored its inheritance, Europe wonders why its house is falling apart’. A recent Wall Street Journal article with this sub-title claimed Europeans no longer believed in the things from which their beliefs sprang: Judaism and Christianity; liberalism and the Enlightenment; martial pride and capability; capitalism and wealth. Still less did they believe in fighting […]
October 26, 2015
Angela Merkel’s recent response to a question about fear of Europe’s increasing Islamisation sparked a media frenzy condemning her as a naïve traitor, or praising her as a compassionate angel. The German weekly Der Spiegel depicted her as a misguided saint, a reincarnated ‘Mutter Theresa’, who was trying to transform Germany into a moral superpower […]
October 19, 2015
Overshadowed by the refugee crisis since the summer, Ukraine was back in the headlines last week. The Dutch Safety Board presented the long-awaited conclusions of its 15-month investigation into the Flight MH17 crash on 17 July last year: the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile over eastern Ukraine, causing the […]
October 12, 2015
“We need to get there first to show love or others will manipulate them into extremism.” The speaker was a tall, short-cropped Swede pleading with Christian leaders, gathered from thirty European countries near Stuttgart in Germany last week, to engage with the migrant communities mushrooming in Europe’s urban centres. Thirty years ago, Peter Magnusson, his […]
October 5, 2015
This week I learnt a new Russian word: Maskirovka. Derived from the word masquerade, it literally means ‘something masked’; a strategy of deceit, like the Trojan horse. It has a long tradition in Russian military history and it seems to be a favourite word in President Putin’s lexicon. Remember the green men in balaclavas who […]
September 28, 2015
Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our comfort zone. Jesus could see that the smug legal expert questioning him needed some shock therapy. After correctly answering Jesus’ question about what was written in the Law concerning inheriting eternal life–‘love God and neighbour’–the man retorted, “And who is my neighbour?” Luke tells us the […]
September 21, 2015
Edvard Munch’s iconic image, The Scream, painted in four different versions from 1893 to 1910, took on deeper meaning for me this week. A very close friend, Albert Hoekstra, was drowned in Sri Lanka while swimming in the sea after a teaching seminar. We buried him on Wednesday. At the funeral, Albert’s pastor, Richard Vervoorn, […]
September 14, 2015
‘I was hungry, and you threw food at me like I was an animal in the zoo. I was a stranger and you erected a 175-kilometer razor-wire barrier to keep me out. I was thirsty, sick and needed fresh clothes and you threatened me with three years in prison if I crossed the border illegally, […]
September 7, 2015
Called The Jihad of Jesus, it’s a handbook for reconciliation and action, a do-it-yourself guide for all Christians and Muslims who want to move beyond the ‘clash of civilizations’ and struggle for justice and peace nonviolently side by side. I’ve known the author, Dave Andrews, for four decades, during which he has been consistently provocative and radical in […]
August 3, 2015
How can we unstop the wells of the Christian heritage of Europe which have been clogged up with neglect, indifference, lies, half-truths, forgetfulness, rebellion and unfaithful witness? We need to start with ourselves. We need to learn to look around us and begin to see with new eyes. What has God done here in our […]
