Religion
What Catholics get wrong about assisted dying
The Catholic Church has always been remarkably relaxed about sin. It becomes distinctly jumpy, however, when it encounters any challenge…
My house is devouring me (and my relationship)
The panic of another season bore down on me as the builder boyfriend painted the breakfast room with the green…
My parents have driven us to boiling point
After two weeks of us heating the house to the temperature my nearly 90-year-old father wanted it, the door to…
The spiritual yearnings of David Bowie
Gnosticism was one of Bowie’s lifelong obsessions and the outer reaches of religious thought inspired many of his lyrics
At 53, I’m training to be a priest
I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate. My motivation…
‘Islamist’ is a dishonest confection
Convicted last month of plotting what could have proved the worst terrorist attack in British history, Walid Saadaoui had hoped…
Iranians are risking everything to convert to Christianity
Apostasy – specifically, conversion to Christianity from Islam – is punishable by death in Iran. Suspected Christians are routinely imprisoned…
What makes a ghost Catholic or Protestant?
W.H. Auden, in his essay on detective fiction, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, asked: ‘Is it an accident that the detective story…
Why is Westminster Cathedral leaving Jesus in the dark?
Sitting beneath the looming darkness of the unfinished ceiling of Westminster Cathedral, I found myself praying. I didn’t even know…
How America’s Wasps lost their sting
They moved, with a sort of nonchalant intent, up the aisle to make communion with their God; the men in…
Believe it or not, Russia is great
I have been invited to Moscow by the Russian Orthodox patriarchate because the organiser is a fan of my podcast.…
The young Tennyson reaches for the stars
Richard Holmes describes how the poet’s early fascination with science – astronomy and geology in particular – would have a lasting influence on his writing
Denmark’s ‘spiritual rearmament’ is a lesson for the West
Something unusual is happening in Denmark – and other countries across Europe, including Britain, ought to pay attention. This spring,…
The Catholic influencers spreading the word of God
Vatican City In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly…
Why should the hunt for the next Archbishop of Canterbury be ‘inclusive’?
On 21 July 1828, the urbane aristocrat Charles Manners-Sutton, 89th Archbishop of Canterbury, died. Just two and a half weeks…
A double loss: The Möbius Strip, by Catherine Lacey, reviewed
Lacey writes in the aftermath of two break-ups – one romantic, one religious – in a hybrid work that even she has difficulty defining
How do you exhibit living deities?
The most-watched TV programme in human history isn’t the Moon landings, and it isn’t M*A*S*H; chances are it’s Ramayan, a…
This is a dangerous moment for free speech
Britain without blasphemy laws is a surprisingly recent development. Blasphemy was abolished as a common law offence in England and…
The secrets of ‘God’s influencer’
Assisi In a medieval church built of white stone, pilgrims and tourists shuffle past the body of a 15-year-old boy…
How I found Christianity
I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County…
The C of E’s tragic misuse of its sacred spaces
I am a priest in the high church tradition of the Church of England. The technical term is Anglo-Catholicism, but…
Letters: The romantic route to cheap flights
Blood on our hands Sir: Paul Wood asks if anyone will be punished for the bloodbath in Syria (‘Massacre of…
Save Syria’s Christians
David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, had rather tellingly different responses to the latest…
Massacre of the innocents: the return of sectarian persecution in Syria
No one covers up their war crimes any more. They film them, celebrate them, post them on X. So we…
Modernisation has sent Russia spinning back to the Stone Age
Howard Amos portrays a once hopeful country now sweeping the past under the carpet as it alternates between pitying itself and pitting itself against the rest of the world
