March 19, 2012
In many European schools and universities these days, believers in God are dismissed as mental dwarfs and intellectual wimps. Yet from ancient times right up to the present, many of history’s greatest and most influential minds have wrestled with the question of God. Reason and faith, they concluded, were complementary, not contradictory. The Greek philosopher […]
March 12, 2012
Three years ago this month, the Archbishop of Canterbury gathered a group of experts together at Lambeth Palace to seek ways to restore ethics and justice in global economics after the financial turmoil beginning in 2007. A year later, the discussion was published in book form with the title, Crisis and recovery: ethics, economics and […]
March 5, 2012
Brace yourselves. We’re reaching the next stage, as predicted by Francis Schaeffer a generation ago. Now the experts tell us that after-birth abortion is ethical. After-birth abortion should be considered late-term abortion because there isn't much of a difference between them biologically. That’s the considered opinion of two academics being argued in a report published […]
February 27, 2012
There’s nothing particularly new about the intense and emotional outcry against God and biblical morality led by today’s ‘new Atheists’. The psalmist asked in his day, ‘Why do the heathen rage?’ [Ps.2] One person well-qualified to answer that question is former atheist, Peter Hitchens. His famous and recently-deceased, anti-theist, older brother Christopher was one of […]
February 21, 2012
A German Pope in Rome and a Muslim baroness from Britain teamed up last week as unlikely allies against ‘militant secularisation’ in Europe, including Britain. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of threats from ‘aggressive forms of secularism’ when he visited Britain in 2010. Last week, Britain’s first female Muslim cabinet minister, Baroness Warsi, echoed his words […]
February 13, 2012
Thanks to some guy named Valentine, the cash registers are ringing up sales of greeting cards, chocolates, roses, lingerie and perfumes this week all over Europe and beyond. Not a bad business, in both senses of the word. Few would be able to tell you who this Valentine was, however. Maybe some casanova or […]
February 6, 2012
The chaos of the Dutch railways caused by the snowstorm last Friday delayed the new professor’s arrival at his own inauguration – just as well for my wife and me caught up in the same confusion of delays and detours on our way to the Free University in Amsterdam. Garbed in cap and gown, Professor […]
January 30, 2012
Most of us living on this planet today have no living memory of the Holocaust. Yet it is a dark chapter of the human story all of us need to remember. Frankly we’d prefer not to have to think about this ‘stain on Europe’s history’. Some even try to deny it ever happened, despite overwhelming […]
January 23, 2012
Journalists were quick to recognise the irony of the bizarre tragedy of the Costa Concordia on this centennial year of the Titanic sinking. Human hubris and flagrant disregard of caution in the pursuit of pleasure has thrust a screaming metaphor in our European faces, with the Italians in the front row seats. Two weeks ago […]
January 16, 2012
weekly word: Each time we gather as the Hope for Europe Round Table, we remind ourselves why. This time, over the past two days, that question was more pressing. If we can believe the media these days, Europe really is becoming the hopeless case. Some years ago, sociologist Grace Davie wrote a book called Europe: […]
January 9, 2012
Last Friday was Epiphany, the day on the Church calendar marking the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, and thus the revelation of the Christ to the Gentiles. A good day therefore for an ‘epiphany’–a revelation–about the new year. I was leading a group of students on a historical walk through old Amsterdam […]
December 19, 2011
George Frederick Handel could never have dreamed that his ‘Messiah’ would become a worldwide phenomenon, performed in thousands of concert halls, churches and auditoriums every Christmas, and enjoyed by millions more via radio, television and countless recordings. Europe may well have become the most secularised continent in the world but Advent still continues to draw […]
