All posts by Jeff Fountain

  1. Legitimate Resistance

    My Christmas reading has offered a surprising perspective of hope for Ukraine from a new book about the 17th century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer lived,…

    Read more
  2. Why Celebrate?

    Beyond the sentimental glitz, music and food, Christmas can be very unsettling. Now for the fourth time since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we are celebrating the Word…

    Read more
  3. Decline or Dialogue?

    Two sharply contrasting views of Europe surfaced this week, one from Washington, the other from Brussels. These two visions imply very different futures for Europe. And for…

    Read more
  4. A compass for our times

    How should followers of Jesus respond in a time of political turmoil and cultural fragmentation, when the loudest voices often drown out the wisest? Last night…

    Read more
  5. Still relevant!?

    This weekend we approach the twentieth century with the eighth of nine events in our Geloof in Mokum series. Celebrating the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam, we have been…

    Read more
  6. Letter to America

    In 1898, three years before he became prime minister of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper addressed American leaders in a series of lectures at Princeton Seminary.  I…

    Read more
  7. The Soul Under Siege

    (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…

    Read more
  8. The Holodomor: History Buried, Truth Denied

    (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…

    Read more
  9. History as a Weapon – I

    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…

    Read more
  10. Transformed by Faith

    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…

    Read more