August 11, 2008
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s funeral last week deservedly received much media attention in Russia and around the world. Regrettably, events over the past days have pushed further reflection on the dissident’s life and writings out of mind. Even before the outbreak of hostilities around South Ossetia, scant notice was given to the role his Christian faith played […]
August 4, 2008
Churches and Christian volunteers play a crucial role in creating social cohesion and integration in Rotterdam, and save the city up to €130 million each year. That is the conclusion of research commissioned by the city council, conducted under the auspices of Radboud University in Nijmegen. Secularists on both sides of the Atlantic have clamoured […]
July 28, 2008
Millions worldwide watched on television as the pelaton swept into the Champs-Élysées last Sunday on the final sprint of the Tour de France. Many would have recognised the familiar orange-and-blue costumes of the Rabobank team, hot in pursuit of the podium honours, as representing one of Holland’s leading banks. Yet few would have known the bank’s origin […]
July 21, 2008
Brazilian YWAMers battling for the basic human rights of indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin have just won a major victory that could save hundreds of young lives. At a hearing of the plenary session for the Human Rights Commission in Brasilia late last week, the proposed ‘Muwaji’s Law’ to outlaw infanticide was officially recognised […]
July 14, 2008
The literal highpoint of the Heritage Tour this year was arriving at Caux, one thousand metres above sea level. As we drove through Montreaux at the eastern end of Lake Geneva, it was too early in the day to be bothered by the traffic of the annual Jazz Festival . Most of the group took […]
July 7, 2008
Sunday, July 6, was the Festival of Jan Hus. For on that date in 1415, the Czech reformer was burnt at the stake as a heretic during the Papal Council, held in Constance on the Swiss-German border. Everyone knows Luther and Calvin, but the story of Europe’s first Reformation, a whole century ahead of the […]
June 30, 2008
The name is derived from Mars, the Roman god of war, yet has been long associated with a popular peace-loving saint born in today’s Hungary but forever associated with the French city of Tours. Martin was born around 316, very soon after Constantine’s conversion and when Christianity became legal within the Roman Empire. He went […]
June 23, 2008
A FREE SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN LONDON prior to a speaking engagement gave me opportunity to wander along the Thames Embankment opposite the London Eye Millennium Wheel. It was not just a casual walk. I was looking for something specific. Two things, actually. One, somewhere along the Thames Embankment was the bust of Samuel Plimsoll, the […]
June 16, 2008
Yes, the photo’s upside down! Actually, that’s how it appears on the cover of a recent book by the most influential atheist over the past fifty years. So-called ‘new’ atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have stood on his shoulders in debunking the existence of God. But Professor Antony Flew’s thinking has recently been […]
June 9, 2008
A short drive from where I live, just outside of Zwolle, is a leafy gladeon what the Dutch optimistically call a mountain. The Swiss would not evencall Mount St Agnes (Sint Agnietenberg) a hill, but here on this ‘mountain’ was written one of the most widely read devotional books of alltime. In the centre of […]
June 2, 2008
A significant piece of church history is being written in Vienna this weekend as the European Football championship kicks off. Different denominations were planning their own individual outreach activities-until the Catholic council of bishops proposed that all the churches work together under one umbrella. Christen am Ball (Christians on the ball) was the result, a broad coalition of […]
May 26, 2008
Before sailing around the shoreline of Holland’s old Zuider Zee with my three sons last week, I packed a suitably nautical book in my kit called ‘The Plimsoll Sensation’, in case we got becalmed. The book had caught my eye in a shop several months ago. I had often cited the story of Samuel Plimsoll […]
