June 23, 2014
This weekend was the summer solstice. So now the days start to shorten and the nights lengthen– in the northern hemisphere at least. In pre-modern times, Europeans were far more conscious of the rhythms of the seasons than in our modern, industrialised, secular times. The church calendar marked this cosmic milestone as the Feast of […]
June 16, 2014
Rotterdam, bombed mercilessly in May 1940 by Hitler’s Luftwaffe, is famous for its Zadkine sculpture depicting the city without a heart. However, a walk through the urban centre on Saturday overwhelmingly convinced a trans-confessional group of ‘fellow pilgrims’ that God was reshaping the church of the future and restoring a heart to the city. The […]
June 15, 2014
Today, Sunday June 15, is World Refugee Sunday. Or, if you prefer, next Sunday, June 22. Its a day to recall that 45 million people–the population of Spain–are forcibly displaced refugees in our world today. The Refugee Highway Partnership, in cooperation with the World Evangelical Alliance, promotes this day annually to encourage churches to pray […]
June 9, 2014
Stavanger, on Norway’s westernmost coastline, is the nation’s oil capital servicing the drilling rigs in the North Sea, making it the most expensive city in Norway, perhaps in the world. Before oil was discovered in the 1960’s, Stavanger was chiefly a herring port. Old Stavanger, today a picturesque township of white wooden houses and quaint […]
June 2, 2014
The loss of solidarity signalled by last week’s European election outcomes has prompted much concern and uncertainty concerning Europe’s future. Roy Searle of the Northumbria Community wrote in his blog that he woke up feeling depressed, downcast, demoralized and quite ashamed to be British: ‘To be a citizen of a country that gives the majority vote […]
May 26, 2014
Earthquakes in Paris and London, but not much has changed in Brussels or The Hague. That’s the bottom line of the European Parliament elections. Geert Wilders’ ‘glorious revolution’ didn’t exactly happen for him in Holland, although it did in France and the UK. Which will have repercussions at the national political level, especially in […]
May 19, 2014
In 28 European nations this week, 400 million voters out of a total population of half a billion have an opportunity to say who they want to represent them at the European Parliament for the next five years. So, why should Christians vote? And how? These elections are truly unique globally, being pan-European by nature. […]
May 12, 2014
The evening before had been a rich but sobering experience in the grandeur of Athen’s Old Parliament Building. Eighty participants from over twenty European nations mingled with local Greeks under the stately chandeliers for the opening event of the State of Europe Forum. A panel of activists helping refugees, migrants, Roma and impoverished Greeks shared […]
May 5, 2014
Much of the story of Europe can be told in terms of one book and two splits. The book is the Bible, which has influenced European life and culture far more profoundly than any other book or cultural source. The two splits happened in the eleventh and sixteenth centuries respectively. In western Europe, we are […]
April 28, 2014
Imagine if nearly two out of three of the young people you knew had virtually no prospect of ever getting a job. Imagine if the students you knew–your friends or relatives–couldn’t get any qualifications because the university was closed for the foreseeable future due to staff strikes. Imagine if you began hearing more and more […]
April 21, 2014
Last week, Russian, American, Ukrainian and European Union officials met in Geneva to seek a resolution for the Ukrainian crisis. To everyone’s surprise, a consensus was reached which gave hope for further de-escalation and a way forward. I happened to be passing through Geneva myself the evening before and the day after, en route to […]
April 14, 2014
At the movies these days, we often have to wear special glasses to experience the 3D effect of the action, without which we are robbed of the ‘full picture’. Today’s biblically-illiterate generation of Europeans are similarly robbed of the ‘full picture’ by having grown up learning to look at the world through secular lenses. Such […]
