Exploring Culture, Faith, and the Future of Europe.
Cultural Literacy & Spiritual Formation
- we call this Friday good
Here is the fourth movement of East Coker, the second of his Four Quartets, in which T.S. Eliot explains why we call this Friday good. IV The wounded surgeon plies the steelThat questions the distempered part;Beneath the bleeding hands we feelThe sharp compassion of the healer’s artResolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is the diseaseIf we… - Quiet faith, bad data, and hope
Last year I linked to a remarkable report, published by the Bible Society in the UK. Last week, the Bible Society has withdrawn the report. What is happening? As you can read in this statement from Paul Williams, the data provided by YouGov (the polling organisation behind the research) turned out to be faulty and… - Good news. What?
What is Good News? This depends very much on the person and the situation, but I would say something along these lines: You might feel out of place, sad, bad, guilty, conflicted or confused, but these are ‘only’ symptoms of the fundamental problem: we lost the connection with God. Most of us here in Europe… - Disagreement is good. But how to do it well?
Europe changed in two generations from a patchwork of co-existing monocultures into a cosmopolitan network of increasingly diverse subcultures. The reactions to these trends are diverse. Some celebrate diversity and embrace the intercultural moment. Others feel that something essential is lost in the process, and some are unable to resist the siren call of political… - Making Sense of the World
What do ‘Innovation, philosophy, and Christianity‘ have in common? They are the lens through which I try to make sense of the world. ‘Making sense of the world’, is what I usually tell people when they ask me what I do. Why do I write about this here? Because this frames the way in which…
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Faith & culture in a post-secular world
Once, there was no ‘secular.’ The world was filled with the divine. And now, after modernity, we are ‘post-secular.’ Religion is back, but in a post-secular shape and within a multi-religious space. The world is filled with plenty of options. Like me, you have probably explored some of these:
- For some, religion serves only as a decorative element in their self-care toolkit.
- For others, the post-secular has opened the door to more substantial spiritual experiences, to spirits, and all things pagan, whether real or fake.
- Many younger Christians—both converts and rediscoverers—gravitate towards traditional, liturgical churches.
- Others are rediscovering the great classical works of philosophy and literature, which once formed the basis of what we call ‘culture,’ the culture of European Christianity.
How can we make sense of this? What does this mean for the future of Christianity in Europe? And what does this mean for our own faith?
Europe At Midnight begins with the conviction that we must take this post-secular, multi-religious, retro- and neo-pagan world seriously. At the same time, we are not yet done with Christianity and the culture it helped shape. The question is, how can there be a future for Christianity in Europe after the demise of Christian Europe?