OccupyLSX: vicars in a twist
THE OCCUPYLSX protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral seems to have boosted the rate of attrition among senior Anglican clergy to levels last seen in the mid-1550s. Given that the Church of England is factionally riven to the point that exposes the far left as wilful amateurs in the backstabbing stakes, we probably do not know [...]
Catholic Herald: still defending General Franco
AROUND 114,000 people ‘disappeared’ in the fifteen years after General Franco overthrew the elected government of Spain, which he proceeded to rule as a one party state for almost four decades. While his memory is still revered by sections of the Spanish far right, he nowadays finds few defenders in this country. Yet Britain’s most upmarket Catholic [...]
Archbishop of Canterbury: thank you, comrade
FROM Thomas Beckett’s spectacular bust-up with Henry II to the Dean of Canterbury’s support for the Communist Party-led popular front initiative in the 1930s and the ‘Faith in the Cities’ report that slammed high period Thatcherism, the clergy has a long history of touching a raw nerve in the British state. Upholding the tradition today [...]
Marxists and the rapture
IF HAROLD Camping has got his sums right and you are reading this anytime after May 21, you are probably in a spot of trouble. The octogenarian Christian radio entrepreneur insists that this Saturday will go down in what little remains of history as the day of ‘the rapture’. Christians will be airlifted into the [...]
Wearing a niqab is not like being a Goth
WHAT’S the difference between donning a burqa and doing your best to look like the bass player in the Sisters of Mercy, Brendan O’Neill asks on his Daily Telegraph blog. Why should those who adhere to religiously-inspired Islamic dress codes be regarded any differently from hoodie wearers or Essex girls in oversized sunglasses? After all, [...]
Catholic Herald on Obama: liberalism as an enemy
THE president of the United States of America is routinely described as ‘the most powerful man in the world’. So we must assume that the Catholic Herald website’s description of Barack Obama as ‘not without influence’ is simply a splendid example of ironic understatement. What I find rather more worrying is the headline on a [...]
Who persecutes believers? Other believers
CHRISTIANS are the religious group that suffers most from persecution on account of faith, Pope Benedict XVI argues in his message for Word Peace Day. And when it comes to perpetrating that persecution, religious fundamentalism and secularism amount to pretty much the same thing, he adds. As someone who defends religious liberty precisely on account [...]
Terry Eagleton: tragic humanism and the far left
UNITARIANISM must surely be the most laid-back denomination in contemporary Protestantism. As far as I understand the rules, even not being a Christian is no barrier to signing up. Meanwhile, those aware of the social geography of north London appreciate that Stoke Newington is the instantiation of all things Bohemian and middle class. Put the [...]
Benedict XVI: Antichrist, or just a bit confused?
THE DESIGNATION Whore of Babylon does not refer to some mythical top notch super-dirty-in- bed Iraqi chick, but to a serious theological debate over the identity to the scarlet-clad woman described in chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation. In the faith community in which I was raised, my poor old mum was always considered [...]
The left and atheism: reply to Ed West
TERRY Eagleton famously remarked that reading Richard Dawkins on theology is like someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds. Whichever side of the God debate one lines up on, such criticism is entirely fair. It is rightly a convention in philosophical discussion that a proposition [...]
