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At the beginning of this month, former Pentecostal pastor, TV producer, and Danish politician Tove Videbaek assumed her role as the European Evangelical Alliance's representative to the European Union in Brussels. Her daunting task is making sure that Europe's evangelicals are heard by E.U.'s governing bodies and that the implications of EU's decisions register with the evangelicals. She spoke about her new job by e-mail with Christianity Today associate editor Agnieszka Tennant.

Christians in the United States regretted the omission of Europe's Christian roots in the draft of the E.U. constitution. What do you think about it? What consequences is it likely to have for Europe's future generations?

I, too, regretted the omission of God and Christian values in the EU treaty. In my job at the Danish parliament I really struggled and discussed this in the chamber. I struggled to make our foreign minister take a neutral stand and refrain from voting against countries like Poland and Spain, who wanted these words in the treaty. But I did not succeed in this. Denmark voted against the mentions of God and Christianity.

But now France and Holland have said no to the treaty, and at the time being no one knows what is going to become of the treaty. Maybe we won't even have a treaty several months from now.

What prepared you for your job at the E.U.?

My parents only went to church at Christmas. But when I was 5 years old, I got very ill, and my parents asked some active Christians they knew to pray for me. I recovered, and they started going to church regularly. I started going to Sunday school in a Pentecostal church in my hometown. There I was inspired by a visiting American pastor—the former superintendent of Assemblies of God in Kansas, V.G. Greisen. When I got married 1967, my husband and I began serving the Lord as pastors of Pentecostal churches in Denmark. That lasted about 20 years. For the past year and a half, I have been on the board of the Pentecostal church in Copenhagen, Kulturcenteret, which is the largest independent church in Denmark.

In 1986, I was asked to help out at a Christian TV station in Copenhagen. I worked there for 12 years, in the beginning as a translator of foreign films and programs. Later on I produced and had my own weekly programs on Christian ethics, legislation, testimonies, etc. The last three years, until 1998, I was the director of the station.

Is this when you got involved in politics?

Yes. In 1998, I was elected to the Danish parliament for the Christian Democrats, a small party of people who mostly are active Christians. In parliament I have been struggling for legislation regarding Christian lifestyle, Christian families, children, and the poor. I also tried to prevent the medical industry from using embryonic stem cells.

My parliament job ended in February 2005, and a few weeks after that I was offered the position as representative of EEA in Brussels.

What do you hope to accomplish in your E.U. job?

I hope to be able to challenge Christians, churches, and Christian politicians to fight for the Christian values, ethics, lifestyle, and families—and against legislation that opposes them. As a politician, I myself needed information about what Christians were doing and saying in the debates in the EU. I did not get any information directly from anyone in the E.U. I had to seek this myself and use lot of time on this.

For example, when we in Danish parliament were discussing legislation about stem cells, I turned to E.U. and U.S. websites to find information and viewpoints of other Christian politicians.

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June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49