July 9, 2012
Prague, one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, was the powder keg for a most ugly phase of the continent’s history, the Thirty Years War. That conflagration which spread across much of Central and Western Europe began with a bizarre event in 1618 called the ‘defenestration’, when city nobles threw two imperial envoys out of the […]
July 2, 2012
We’re off again on our search for Europe’s soul on the Heritage Tour. From seven nations, we have started our discovery trip seeking clues as to what gave Europe her DNA, and how the inhabitants of the western peninsula of Eurasia created western civilisation. Our starting point has been the Dutch city of Utrecht, in […]
June 25, 2012
In our globalised world, where ‘everyone is now everywhere’, tensions over religion, worldview and ideology threaten the future of civilisation and make the emergence of a civil public square essential. This threat prompted Dr Os Guinness and Profesosr Thomas Schirrmacher to launch the Global Charter of Conscience last week in the European Parliament building in […]
June 18, 2012
This coming Wednesday night, at nine minutes past eleven, our planet will begin to tilt in the opposite direction, moving the northern hemisphere away from the sun. For us in Europe, this is the summer solstice. Down under, it is the winter solstice. In Scandinavia and the Baltics, this event has been celebrated traditionally since […]
June 11, 2012
Modern economics has become a zombie, a body detached from the soul which gave it life, argues Tomas Sedlácek, former economic advisor to Vaclav Havel. A zombie works efficiently, he explains, but without compassion, tenderness or understanding. The result is a hard, inhuman and eventually self-devouring and devastating system. Dr Sedlácek was speaking last week […]
June 4, 2012
Last weekend in Zwolle, a short drive from my home in Holland, an ambitious programme was presented in several historic church buildings across the inner city to explore the relevance of the Modern Devotion movement of the 15th century for our postmodern times. Zwolle’s most famous son is Thomas a Kempis, collator of The Imitation […]
May 28, 2012
Sorry, no Weekly Word this week – we’re celebrating my wife’s 65th birthday at her ‘I’m not going to retire’ party in Italy with family and close friends from Oceania, Africa, Asia, America and across Europe. But since one picture is worth a thousand words, here are some photos that speak volumes about the richness […]
May 21, 2012
As I sit on the deck of the Next Wave, the 42 metre training and evangelism ketch operated by YWAM Marine Reach, I think about the significant role boats played in the Bible. The Ark, which became the vessel for humankind’s salvation; the ship of Tarsus Jonah tried to flee on; the fishing boats Jesus […]
May 14, 2012
No, the game is not over–yet! There is still hope for Europe, participants at the State of Europe Forum in Copenhagen heard last week. But warnings of serious consequences if radical change is not effected were sounded by several speakers. Tunne Kelam, a leading dissident of the Soviet era in Estonia and a europarliamentarian since […]
May 7, 2012
Political earthquakes shook Europe this weekend with elections results that promise to overturn the status quo. The people in France and in Greece have called for change. The people in northern Germany have also signalled that change is on the way. So what now? I don’t envy anyone taking office in these times. As for […]
April 30, 2012
Let me confess that I am not a great royalist–despite the fact that I have often joked about the three queens in my life. As a New Zealander, there’s Elizabeth. As a Dutchman, there’s Beatrix. As a husband, there’s Romkje, sometimes nicknamed ‘the Queen’ by family and friends. Royalism is not in my genes. One […]
April 23, 2012
One of the iconic films from my youth was a Stanley Kramer comedy called it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. The title came to mind as I prepared to share at an urban missions conference in Montreal about the challenges and opportunities of living in a post-Christian society. For today, the western world over, […]
