Christianity
In praise of Advent
The first Sunday of Advent is 27 November this year. For those of us who prefer Advent services to Christmas…
Britain really is ceasing to be a Christian country
A landmark in national life has just been passed. For the first time in recorded history, those declaring themselves to…
Breaking the commandments on Moses’s mountain
A medieval party of 800 Armenians at the top of Mount Sinai suddenly found themselves surrounded by fire. Their pilgrim…
The slow (and ignominious) death of the British funeral
I mourn for the traditional ceremony
Let’s vote ‘in’ to renew the EU, says Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor
There is more to the idea of Europe than narrow economic considerations. The Remain side needs to say so
The beginning of the end for Pope Francis
What the Pope didn’t just say about divorce
The price of a cathedral – and how deans pay it
Deans are facing tough decisions to keep their beautiful buildings in good order
Following Jesus’s followers
In his new book Apostle Tom Bissell has an advantage over writers who go looking for Jesus: he can start…
Hell made fun – the joy of Hieronymus Bosch
The 20th-century painter who called himself Balthus once proposed that a monograph about him should begin with the words ‘Balthus…
On the trail of Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca is today acknowledged as one of the foundational artists of the Renaissance. Aldous Huxley thought his ‘Resurrection’…
What conservative gay Christians want
Conservative homosexual Christians want something more radical than marriage
Howard Jacobson's Shylock is full of mercy and compassion
Howard Jacobson’s novelistic riff on The Merchant of Venice for the Hogarth Shakespeare project turns, unsurprisingly, on what makes some…
Mark Zuckerberg should be applauded — whatever his motive
The Egyptian driver of a London minicab said almost nothing during our journey but dropped me off at my destination…
We need Christianity more than ever in this Age of Atheists
Have we ever needed Christianity more than we do today? It’s a rhetorical question, for sure, because the loss of…
Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?
Martin Gayford investigates how this splendid Tahitian Madonna came about and why religion was ever-present in Gauguin's art
'The tide is turning': Justin Welby interviewed by Michael Gove
An interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby
The Lord’s Prayer is no more offensive than Jeremy Clarkson or deodorant
There was a time not so very long ago when the most common complaint about Christmas was that it had…
The question Christianity fails to answer: ‘Who is my neighbour?’
‘Fine old Christmas,’ wrote George Eliot, ‘with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in…
Am I a brave cult survivor, too?
When I was 21, I lived with a cult for a year. It was a commune really, a tight-knit group…
Has the Archbishop of Canterbury forsaken God?
The Archbishop of Canterbury, we heard during the BBC’s Songs of Praise broadcast last Sunday, ‘doubted God’ after the Paris…
Egypt: where gods are born and go to die
Tom Holland on Egypt, where the deities were born and history itself began
Agincourt was neither necessary, nor great. We’re mad to celebrate it
Can anyone explain this sudden enthusiasm for Agincourt, that unexpected victory over the French, now being celebrated, or rather commemorated,…