Religion
A romcom with very little com
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
Discomfort and joy
The anxieties that long ago shadowed Christmas are back
The importance of giving offence
As dons at Cambridge vote on a new protocol on constraints to free speech, we mark this month the 500th…
Open season
Anything goes with Advent calendars
Sex and corpses
A great temple of the goddess Tara can be found at Tarapith in West Bengal. But her true abode, in…
The Catholic church’s cowardly betrayal
Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon…
The woke war on religion
Though you wouldn’t know it from most American media outlets, the phenomenon of vandalizing and burning religious sites which is…
Beyond belief
It’s a mistake to turn Hagia Sophia back into a mosque
My fears for my church have been realised
The only memorable argument I have ever heard in that tedious debate about whether Shakespeare was a Catholic came from…
Aid and abet
How should the money we send abroad be spent?
Black Lives Matter is a state-backed religion
‘Protest’ often feels inadequate as a characterization for the public exhibitions that have erupted nationwide over the past several weeks.…
Worship anywhere – apart from in church
During these months of inertia, I confess to having on occasion made illicit trips to churches in the English countryside.…
Nothing sacred
Hate legislation is blasphemy law by another name
The great escape
When I lived briefly in Stamford Hill I was mesmerised by the huge fur hats (shtreimel) worn by the local…
Letters
The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however…
Letters
Divine works Sir: Luke Coppen writes that livestreamed services ‘lack the vital communal dimension of worship’ and ‘are, at times,…
Real Life
The toad who lives at the bottom of the garden in the pile of bricks beneath the potting table was…
Risen again
Whenever Christianity seems all but exhausted, it bursts into life once more
A Rabbi’s Notebook
Last Monday night and Tuesday were our Jewish festival of Purim, when we recall the events described in the Book…
‘A perfect knight’: Remembering Roger Scruton
Daniel Hannan Roger Scruton changed the course of my life. He addressed my school’s philosophy society when I was 16,…
Why I changed my mind about Catholicism
I grew up in a traditional English family, surrounded by cousins, chivvied by aunts, presided over by my grandmother, who…
‘I was a tortured, obviously brilliant child’: James Ellroy interviewed
James Ellroy is occasionally quoted as saying he’s the greatest American crime novelist ever. The man sometimes called the ‘demon…
When atheists stole the moral high ground
In 1585, Jacques du Perron presented to the court of the French king Henry III, as a kind of after-dinner…
Patently insincere: Kanye’s Jesus is King reviewed
Grade: B– Kanye West has found Jesus Christ. Lucky old Christ. If I were Christ I’d have hidden out a…
![Parents and children demonstrate against the No Outsiders programme at Parkfield School in Birmingham in March [Photo: Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Melanie_McDonagh.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Should Muslim parents be allowed to challenge LGBT lessons?
We saw two different worlds, or at least two different value systems, collide in the High Court in Birmingham this…
