How can we make sure that these voices are heard? What kinds of platform can we provide for them to speak from?
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n what ways do you or your agency/church make a distinct contribution in outlining a vision or addressing a challenge for mission in Europe?
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Speaking on behalf of your network, agency or church, what do you think is the most important message to be communicated about mission in Europe today? This question elicited some very passionate, interesting and profound reflections.
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re you optimistic or pessimistic about the health of Christianity in Europe? And speaking on behalf of your network, agency or church, what makes you optimistic about the church and mission in Europe?
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Over the last few decades, we have been witnessing the persistence and even the resurgence of religious beliefs and practices in societies that had undergone a long process of secularisation.
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A YouGov survey of 1,660 people in the UK suggested that there are more people attending church (albeit less frequently), a reduction in the number of professed atheists, an increase in the number of agnostics, and an increase in the numbers of those who say they pray occasionally …
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The same year that Charles Taylor published A Secular Age (2007), Philip Jenkins also wrote about the interface between religion and secular society in his book God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis …
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Two swallows don’t make a summer, says the proverb. Yet two recent Dutch books about reflection on roots could perhaps signal a significant climate change in Europe concerning interest in the Bible and Christianity.
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To date there have been two principal attempts to make Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age more accessible to the general reader.
Read MoreThe famous maxim that “demography is destiny” may, or may not, be attributable to Auguste Comte, but it was certainly Comte who first wrote about how population trends and distributions could determine the future of a country.
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One of the most striking aspects of the socioreligious context of Europe is the high proportion of so-called nominal Christians. These are people who are affiliated to a Church and/or identifying as ‘Christian’ in surveys.
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The Lausanne Global Consultation on Nominal Christianity was held in Rome, Italy on 14-18 March 2018. What follows is the full text of the Lausanne Rome 2018 Statement on Nominal Christianity, issued after that consultation.
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Contemporary Christian beliefs and behaviours in Western Europe are rarely researched beyond the national level. To address this knowledge gap, Pew Research have published a comprehensive 156-page research report
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The sun shines. The lake glimmers. This summer, like summers past, an adult kind of faith will emerge from the waters. Personal faith, wet and fresh. To me, the Christian practice of baptism assumes a special resonance as the rite of passage into an adult kind of faith.
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Mission in Europe cannot be properly understood – or responsibly carried out – without reference to the margins of European societies and those who find themselves there. Just as Jesus’ mission was “at, with and from the margins… the church’s mission cannot be otherwise.”
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There is a bus which runs directly from a small Roma Hamlet in NE Slovakia to Sheffield. When Slovakia became part of the EU in 2007, many Slovakian Roma travelled on this bus and settled in estates in the north of Sheffield, UK.
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In this article we will look at 1 Peter 1:1 and at the Protestant-Evangelical movement in Kosovo. This church exists in the context of Islam, and has already been in the margins for decades
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Like the rest of Europe, life for asylum seekers in Gloucester, England, is a ‘liminal space’ where they survive and wait, knowing they could be moved by the authorities at any time. “It is like living in an open prison without a status, charged of a crime without a name,”
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In 2016, the Pew Research Centre estimated that one in every twenty Europeans self identifies as ‘Muslim’, making a total Muslim population in Europe of just under 26 million. This is a significant increase over the 2010 population that Pew reported at 19.5 million. in the context of Islam, and has already been in the margins for decades
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How should the church in Europe respond to the growing visible presence of Muslims in our continent? I suggest in a fourfold way, with i. a compassionate heart; ii. an informed mind; iii. an involved hand; and iv. a witnessing tongue. Nevertheless, before we seek to touch the hearts of our Muslim friends with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we need to honestly look at our own hearts.
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