Contrary to my general policy, the header image was generated by ChatGPT. This is what you get when you ask an AI system to generate a self-portrait. A nebulous installation of stars connected with wires of light. It suggests something we have come to associate with the letters ‘A’ and ‘I’, though I still wonder what it really means. In this post, I try to organise some of my, admittedly conflicted, feelings about the use of AI, specifically in the context of serious work. (It goes without saying that it is an utter waste to use any AI tools to…Continue readingIn the Mirror of the Averaging Interface?
“Something huge and beautiful and awe-inspiring.” That is what one recent convert to Christianity was looking for. The Times called it a ‘full-fat’ faith. Not a faith which comes neatly packaged in five slogans. This is not nostalgia, this is hunger. Some doubt the motivation of recent converts, assuming that they are actually more interested in cultural traditionalism than in certain theological truths of Christianity. But these people search for something big and fat because they know that the world is, in fact, complicated and life is challenging. Some of it is because the world is such a frightfully awesome…Continue readingStarting Points
The last day of the year is a good moment to reflect on this project. When I started this in December 2024, I had a few ideas but no fixed plan. I used this year to experiment and to get feedback from readers. In this brief post, I’ll share what I did, my thoughts on it, and what I plan to do in 2026. What I did in 2025 What Europe At Midnight will be in 2026 In general, I am happy with Europe At Midnight as a platform for thinking out loud about culture, faith and the future of…Continue readingEurope At Midnight After One Year
One of the musical treasures of the season of Advent is a series of seven antiphons known as the Great O Antiphons. Seven chants, seven prayers, seven expressions of longing and expectation. The first antiphon, O Sapientia (for December 17) is a call for Wisdom to appear. O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things:Come and teach us the way of prudence. The…Continue readingO Advent
One saturday morning in November, I gave a talk at the Breakwater conference. It was an event organised by the Dutch Estuary group. “Estuary is a place where people come for conversation. Honest conversation. Not ideological warfare, memes, and trolling, but mutually respectful attempts to understand one another, and to learn to appreciate different perspectives and viewpoints.” (see website for more info.) Estuary emerged from the work of Paul VanderKlay, a CRC pastor in California and a prolific YouTuber who has conversations with random people on the internet. Here is his conversation with me. (This is a short clip about…Continue readingBreakwater, or the art of conversation
Something James K.A. Smith wrote recently: There is something gloriously quixotic about devotion to the humanities today (disciplined attention to history, close reading of texts, pursuit of truth, all with a commitment to humanism). The hungry maw of the corporate, neoliberal university chews this up and laughs. But we’re not fiddling while Rome burns. We humanists are insistently playing the music that called us, hoping some of the younger generation learn the song. Indeed, we’re not fiddling.Continue readingWe’re not fiddling
I have been thinking about this for a while, but I have decided to delete my accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Effective January 1st, 2026, all of it will be gone. Instead, I will read more books and write about it. At this point, I could write an eloquent story about mindless scrolling, hours lost in niche ‘research’, and my diminishing attention span. But I won’t. Perhaps I could come up with a clever manifesto about how everything and everyone is crushed by the Machine. I could repeat all the Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, but someone…Continue readingGraduating from ‘social media’
Recently, I gave a talk called “What is happening in Europe?“ Here are the slides, in Dutch. We also crowdsourced a short list of some books and other resources. No attempt is made to cover these trends in great detail; these are some starting points for exploration. Enjoy the journey! The trends are clustered as follows: 1 Liturgical Revival, 2 Intercultural Churches, 3 Intentional Communities, 4 De-Secularisation, 5 Paganism – Retro & Neo, 6 Freedom of Religion and Belief, 7 Nature vs Culture, 8 Glocalism, 9 Screen World, 10 Alternative Learning. 1 Liturgical Revival 2 Intercultural Churches 3 Intentional Communities…Continue readingReading List – How to understand what is happening in Europe?
A few weeks ago, I went to York in northern England for meetings with fellow clergy from various Anglican Churches from Scotland, England, Croatia, Germany, and the US. We discussed the future of Christianity in Europe and prayed about our mission in it. The Dutch missiologist Stefan Paas gave a keynote lecture. He is the author of books such as Church Planting in the Secular West. Learning from the European Experience, and Pilgrims and Priests. Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society. Paas defines our secular age as post-christendom, post-Christian, and post-modern all at once. Post-Christendom means that the old reality…Continue readingTrends in post-Christian Europe
Recently, there have been some interesting reports about churches across Europe. In the UK, the Bible Society released a report called The Quiet Revival. It challenges the idea that churches are in terminal decline. It notes that, while mainstream churches are struggling, the churches with a more clearly defined profile, whether Catholic or Pentecostal, see growth. Churches are also becoming more ethnically diverse. However, the quote that was picked up by most commentators was this: The Quiet Revival shows that the most dramatic church growth is among young adults, particularly young men. In 2018, just 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds said…Continue readingWhat is happening with Gen Z?