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 […]
May 19, 2008
Not only in Stockholm and Amsterdam, but also in London, thousands of Christians have taken church out onto the streets over Pentecost with festive presentations of the message of Jesus. Totally independent of the events we reported over the last two weeks, the London Pentecost Festival saw a dazzling array of over a hundred events […]
May 12, 2008
Christians in Amsterdam this year are grasping Pentecost as an occasion to reach out across cultural and religious borders, as they seek the welfare of the city. Under the motto ‘Get the Spirit’, they have initiated a nine-day city-wide festival of music and art, dance and debate, encounters and excursions, barbeques and workbees, concerts and […]
May 5, 2008
Sweden doesn’t usually make headlines for its spirituality. But on Saturday records were broken when 15,000 Christians formed the largest crowd ever to fill the Kungsträdgården (King’s Garden) in the centre of Stockholm, the nation’s capital, in a multi-cultural Jesus Manifestation. Churches from across the Christian spectrum–Orthodox and Catholic, Lutheran and Baptist, through to […]
April 28, 2008
Maybe it does sounds pretentious. But the calling of those who name Jesus as Lord is nothing less than to help shape the future. We are not simply to let the future happen, fatalistically shrugging our shoulders and mumbling about God’s sovereignty. Yes, God is sovereign. But that doesn’t put him in the same category […]
April 21, 2008
How bleak is Europe’s future? Can Christianity survive today’s challenges? Will Europe’s cities soon be re-populated by Muslim immigrants? Will her cathedrals be replaced by mega-mosques? Or will Europe simply implode from moral failure? Last week we wrote about the two-week Heritage Trip, my wife and I host each year, starting in Amsterdam (June 28), and finishing in Geneva […]
