April 25, 2005
THE PAPPARAZZI HAVE ALREADY BAPTISED HIM PAPA RATZI. British tabloids couldn’t resist splurging with racist headlines of irreverent mockery, calling the new pope ‘God’s Rottweiler’, or the ‘panzerpope’. Even the usually responsible Independent devoted five pages on ‘the German’s coldly, calculated power play’ of setting the agenda for his own election, and other supposed cardinal […]
April 18, 2005
REALLY, MONSIEUR CHIRAC, YOU ARE A VERY FUNNY MAN! There you were on television, surrounded by young people in a carefully choreographed non-debate, trying to convince all of France to vote in favour of the EU Constitution. You thought you could borrow a sermon from the pope and tell your audience: ‘Fear not!’ Yet you […]
April 11, 2005
THESE ARE WORRYING TIMES FOR SECULARISTS. And for Muslims. And for Christians. And for Europeans in general. There’s talk of a crisis of secularism. There’s a struggle for the soul of Islam. Churches have been losing their flocks for decades. And Europe is still in search of her soul. All these trends have merged into […]
April 4, 2005
WE DON’T HAVE TO AGREE WITH ALL KAROL WOJTYLA STOOD FOR to acknowledge that he was one of history’s giants. The second-longest serving pope and the most-travelled by far in history, John Paul II was the first pope to visit a synagogue, the first to visit Auschwitz, the first to give diplomatic recognition to Israel, […]
March 28, 2005
THE CROSS-FORMED BY TWO INTERSECTING LINES-IS THE SIMPLEST OF ALL SYMBOLS. It has also become the most common of all symbols throughout European society, displayed in countless forms on buildings, books, necks, crowns, ships’ sails and graves. The cross appears on the flags of many European nations: Denmark, England, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Georgia, Greece, […]
March 21, 2005
IF YOU WERE NOT WEARING IRISH GREEN LAST THURSDAY, you ran the risk of receiving a friendly pinch or punch from one of the many Irish scattered around the western world. For March 17 was St Patrick’s Day. On a stopover in Seattle airport travelling back to Europe last Thursday, I walked into a restaurant […]
March 14, 2005
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE MOTHER OF A SUICIDE BOMBER? Susi sat across the table from me this week and told me of a remarkable encounter she had had recently in a Palestinian refugee camp. Originally from the Black Forest in southern Germany, Susi, a free-lance photographer, was part of a small international team […]
March 7, 2005
THE MURDER OF FILM-MAKER THEO VAN GOGH, IN THE STREETS OF AMSTERDAM FOUR MONTHS AGO, triggered brief but widespread panic in political circles. Streets in Rotterdam were cordoned off as police units beseiged houses and arrested terrorist suspects. Fires were started in churches, mosques and schools. Threats of more murders of prominent politicians prompted well-known […]
February 28, 2005
IN FOUR WEEKS IT BEGINS: A FIFTY-DAY GLOBAL PRAYER AND FASTING SEASON for the YWAM family of ministries around the world. That could involve some 20,000 people in one thousand locations. Languages will include English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Hindi and Burmese. What is at stake is the healing of the nervous […]
February 21, 2005
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH ‘HOPE FOR EUROPE’? WILL THERE BE ANOTHER HOPE.21 CONGRESS LIKE THE ONE IN BUDAPEST OVER TWO YEARS AGO? I often get asked these sorts of questions as I move around the continent. Recently in Amsterdam at a meeting of the working group of Hope for Europe, we filled up a whiteboard with […]
February 14, 2005
WE INTERRUPT THIS SERIES OF W E E K L Y W O R D S ON POPULAR TRENDS IN SPIRITUALITY TO BRING YOU AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. At least, I think it’s important. There are some things I’m passionate about; some things that motivated me to leave Middle Earth (alias New Zealand), and to come […]
February 7, 2005
JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS AGO, SNOWBOUND AIRPORTS FORCED MY WIFE ROMKJE TO TRAVEL BACK TO HOLLAND BY CAR WITH A COUPLE WHO HAD A STRANGE TALE TO TELL. They were totally convinced that somehow Jesus and Mary Magdelene had had a child who had grown up in France and from whom Europe’s royalty had […]
