It’s no mean feat, telling the truth about history. History is politicized, covering contested terrain. It’s often told solely by the victors. It’s often grim, and sifting through the bones and ashes isn’t always the happiest endeavor. And it’s often received with a kind of snooty modern superiority. All that said, it’s important to carry…
It was only two pages at first. A single, double-sided sheet. Paul De Koekkoek, pastor of First Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in Edmonton, wrote the articles and paid for the issues to be mimeographed and mailed to churches and interested individuals across Canada. In April 1946, De Koekkoek proposed (in Dutch) that the CRC denomination…
In this fictional, historically-based graphic novel for juvenile readers, author R. J. Palacio fleshes out the background of characters she first introduced in her previous works, Wonder and Auggie & Me, especially that of Julian and his ancestors. Julian is assigned a project to write an essay about someone he knows for his humanities class. He facetimes with…
At times I’ve wondered why I’ve kept all of my correspondence my entire life. I have saved letters that I received way back in the 1940’s. Every time I move, I take the shoebox with letters along. But now I know why. There are two benefits that made it worth saving these letters. One I’ve…
The miraculous healing of a 12-year-old girl brought the French army to a standstill in 1656. The girl was Marguerite Périer. She was Blaise Pascal’s niece and a boarding student at an abbey just outside of Paris called Port-Royal-des-Champs. Marguerite was suffering from an incurable physical ailment: an eye abscess. Several doctors had examined the…
Some years after becoming an oblate at the New Camadoli Hermitage in California’s remote Big Sur, Paula Huston embraced God’s call to research and write this compact yet far-reaching and exhaustively researched history of the hermitage. First, she discerned she could not do justice to New Camadoli unless she dug deeply into the history of…
As the old saying goes: “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The past does not give us a blueprint for the future, but it can provide us insights into the trajectory of current events. This year, many Dutch towns are celebrating the 450th anniversary of one of the most important turning points…
The current Russo-Ukrainian war brings back difficult memories of another conflict that occurred in my youth and displaced virtually all of my paternal relatives from their homes. It was July 1974. I had just completed my first year of university at Bethel College in Minnesota where I was majoring in music. During that summer, I…
Last week I covered the first two decades of the Eighty Year’s War between the Low Countries and Spain. Those first two decades are when everything came unglued. The late 1580’s, however, mark a decisive turn in the fortunes of the Dutch rebels. It happened when King Philip II of Spain was distracted. He tried…
Many Dutch towns are celebrating the 450-year anniversary of what happened on April 1, 1572, when a motley crew of seamen (called the Sea Beggars), loyal to William of Orange, were able to capture and hold their first town (Brielle) on the Dutch mainland. The capture of Brielle was an important turning point in the…
In 1918 pandemic followed war. In 2022 war has followed pandemic. Few of us saw it coming. Up to the last moment, I thought Russian President Vladimir Putin would continue to chip away at Ukraine’s largely Russian-speaking eastern territories, funding “separatists” and daring the rest of the world to do something about it. I personally…
What if? My kids love “what if” questions. What if you had two extra arms? What if you could turn yourself into anything you wanted? These types of questions stimulate their imaginations and get them thinking about what life would be like if things were different. In her new book The Making of Biblical Womanhood,…
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