July 25, 2025
(The third in a series of four addressing the persistent Russian efforts to hijack Ukraine’s history.) If the Holodomor—the engineered famine of 1932–33—was Stalin’s attempt to break Ukraine’s body, then his campaign against Ukrainian culture, faith, and language was a calculated effort to annihilate its spirit. The deliberate, systematic erasure of a people’s soul was […]
July 20, 2025
(WeeklyWord extra: the second in a series of four on Ukraine’s hijacked history) By any measure, the Holodomor stands among the most horrifying atrocities of the 20th century. From 1932 to 1933, a man-made famine orchestrated by Stalin’s Soviet regime killed an estimated 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians. It was not the result of drought […]
July 19, 2025
Escalated Russian aggression ‘emboldened by the silence and inaction of powerful global actors’, prompted leaders of Ukrainian faith networks to make ‘a desperate cry’ for support and solidarity to faith network leaders of churches and organisations in Europe and beyond during a Global Interfaith online meeting on Thursday*. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant voices echoed the […]
July 12, 2025
In war, the first casualty is truth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long and brutal campaign waged by Moscow—not only against Ukraine’s sovereignty but against its very identity. Over the next four Weekly Words, we will examine how Ukraine’s story has been hijacked and manipulated into myths and narratives invented in Moscow. […]
July 5, 2025
How do you explain to children, as the wailing of sirens tell them to rush into the metro stations night after terrifying night, filled with anxiety and fear, why the Russian president is escalating his attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine? Or why the American president this week ordered a halt to the transfer of […]
June 28, 2025
This week’s NATO summit was celebrated as a success by the Dutch authorities – the 5 per cent defence spending target was agreed on (for ten years from now!), the Article 5 commitment to collective defence was reaffirmed, and you-know-who’s ego was left intact. But what was not achieved? No new substantive action of economic […]
June 21, 2025
How did secularisation unfold in a Europe that, at the time of the Reformation, seemed so thoroughly Christian—whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox? Amsterdam’s transformation from a bastion of Reformed faith in the 17th century to a cradle of secular modernity in the 18th is one major trajectory of that shift. And one worth tracing for […]
June 14, 2025
This weekend, the Geloof in Mokum series explores Amsterdam’s so-called ‘Golden Age’—a time when faith played a central role in making the city the world’s leader in the 17th century. Spoiler: faith influenced virtually everything. Amsterdam’s rise was rooted in the Reformational worldview embraced during the Alteratie on May 26, 1578. That day, the city’s […]
June 7, 2025
Church leaders from around the world gathered in Amsterdam this week to commemorate 500 years of their Free Church tradition, which began as a persecuted minority but has grown into the largest stream within Protestant Christianity today. The starting point of this movement was not Amsterdam, but rather a little town called Zollikon just outside […]
May 31, 2025
We hear a lot of claims these days about ‘making things great’. But what is true greatness? How do we recognise greatness? How will we know when those who promise to ‘restore greatness’ have delivered the goods? What should we be looking for? Jesus had a problem with his disciples’ expectations of greatness. In Matthew […]
May 24, 2025
As democracy, freedom of speech, human dignity and rights come under increasing threat even in the heart of the western nations, we are being forced to realise we cannot take these elements of our western civilisation for granted anymore. While essential for our lifestyles in free nations, none of these facets are self-evident or self-perpetuating. […]
May 17, 2025
Nestled in the valley between the European Union institutions in Brussels is the Chapel for Europe, a reconstructed former convent chapel resurrected as an ecumenical worship space for EU politicians and staff. The chapel stands as a reminder of the spiritual values the founding fathers of Europe believed were essential for lasting peace in Europe. The […]
