My article on Norway is up at The American Spectator today. Link here.

Sad news (as if we needed more). John Stott has passed away, old and full of years as the Bible says (he was 90).

J.I. Packer remembers that Stott “in his younger days … was a brilliant and hard-worked student evangelist.” He was the chosen speaker for a considerable number of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s week-long evangelistic campaigns at British universities, particularly Cambridge and Oxford. These later extended to North America and throughout the Commonwealth. From these evangelistic talks came one of his best-selling books, Basic Christianity (1958), which has been translated into 25 languages and sold well over a million copies.

Billy Graham first visited England in 1946, and Stott met him while sharing open-air preaching at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. In 1954 he welcomed Graham for his 12-week Harringay Crusade, and the two became warm friends. Later on this friendship would be important to the Lausanne movement, but it is worth noting that it began through an active, shared commitment to evangelism.