Vladimir Putin’s ‘peace mission’ to ‘rescue’ Ukraine underscores how essential and timely European studies are for ‘understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do’ (1 Chron. 12:32).

Under his autocratic rule, Putin’s own distorted, religious interpretation of history has justified a barbaric, brutal and uncivilised attack on innocent civilians and a peaceful nation, as well as on freedom and democracy everywhere.

Under the old communistic regimes, ‘organised forgetting’ was widely deployed to erase memory and manipulate the understanding of the ‘new socialist man’ to serve the ends of the state.

A more subtle and benign form of ‘organised forgetting’ in our western, secular, post-Christian times is the loss of historical awareness concerning Europe in general, and of the role of the Bible and the story of Jesus in shaping European culture, in particular. One such example was the determined effort to avoid any reference to Christianity as a source of European identity and values in the proposed EU constitution in 2005. Sadly, the paradox of Europe is that it is the continent most shaped by the Bible…and by the rejection of the Bible.

Secularism has scant regard for the past. Yet as Christians, we should realise that history really matters. The Old Testament (which begins with seventeen history books) warns repeatedly against forgetting. God’s people are to hold feasts to help them remember his intervention in their history. The Christian faith is historical: if Jesus did not live, die, and rise again, Christianity is false.

The Bible itself gave western civilisation the understanding of history as a linear progression from a beginning towards an end. Time conceived in terms of past, present, and future came from no other source. It is not self-evident. No other sacred writings take history seriously.

Yet history as a subject has been eclipsed in this information age by subjects offering ‘greater job opportunity.’ The history of Europe has been ignored for generations in favour of the history of nation-states, which reinforces national myths and identities, often at the expense of rival nations. The history of the transformation of the European peoples through the story of Jesus and the influence of the Bible has been long superceded by other narratives, or loss of narratives.

The consequence is the loss of memory and identity. Loss of historical perspective on current affairs breeds short sightedness and truncates future vision. In short, we have a crisis of vision in Europe. Where are the states-(wo)men and spiritual leaders pointing our way forward?

A community of peoples
Some seventy years ago, historian Christopher Dawson wrote: ‘There is an urgent need for the better understanding of Europe, not only as a living society of peoples but as the creator of what we call “modern civilisation.” For however uncertain the political prospects of Europe may be, the overwhelming importance of its contribution to civilisation remains, and unless we understand this, we cannot understand much about the world in which we live.’

‘We cannot begin to understand Europe itself,’ he continued, ‘unless we study the tradition of Christian culture, which was the original bond of European unity and the source of its common spiritual aims and its common moral values. [Dawson, C., (2009) Understanding Europe. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. p. xvii]

Nationalism, which emerged after the Reformation when Protestants tended to focus only on their own nations, led every European people to insist on what distinguished it from the rest, instead of what united it with them, wrote Dawson. We learned the history of our own nations as though they were a complete whole and not part of a greater unity.

The history that really mattered was not one of conflicts and rivalries of various European states, he argued, nor of economic competition, but one of a dynamic spiritual process. For Europe was a community of peoples sharing a common spiritual tradition which had its origin three thousand years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean. This tradition was spread from people to people (via the peninsular we call Europe) until it had come to permeate the world.

The MA in Missional Leadership and European Studies offered by ForMission College, in partnership with the Schuman Centre for European Studies (Amsterdam) and validated by Newman University (Birmingham), seeks to equip students with this forgotten perspective.

Designed not only for those engaging in traditional missions of evangelism and church planting, it is also for those entering the public square as politicians, civil servants, journalists, lawyers, educationalists, economists and activists.

Students attend study days face to face in Amsterdam or by zoom each semester for two years, with facilitated class time, self-study, personal research and preparation and writing of assignments. The third year involves the researching and writing of a dissertation project. Entry points for the programme are in September, January and May each year.

Further details are set out in the MA brochures, which are available through the home page on the college website.

Join us on a journey through time!

Jeff

 

Jeff Fountain, MA Tutor, ForMission College and Initiator of the Schuman Centre for European Studies, based in Amsterdam.