Religion

This evening, if you have time and are around central London, there is an interesting lecture at the British Academy by the admirable sociologist of religion, Linda Woodhead, whose book with Andrew Brown on the CofE, The Church We Left Behind, is as depressing as it is largely to the point. The title is ‘Why No Religion is the New Religion’, and that is pretty much the size of it: the default identity of Brits is no longer reflexively CofE, but not-religious. (Actually, I am a Catholic of sectarian bent but I would personally hesitate to describe myself as religious, on the basis it is a bit of a self-regarding

My line on the Anglican crisis is a bit eccentric. I think there are now grounds for hope that the Communion can survive – and the reason is the recent rise of gay marriage as the central issue. Lazy punditry says that gay marriage is the bone of contention. But it’s actually a new issue – it wasn’t being discussed a decade ago, when Rowan Williams was holding these summits. The real bone of contention is whether actively gay priests and bishops should be allowed. On this the two sides are obviously adamantly opposed. The arrival of gay marriage as a big issue seems to make the crisis worse than

Are we really, as David Cameron claimed in his Christmas message, a country shaped by ‘Christian values’? Yesterday’s Evening Standard poll – which found that shopping is three times more integral to Britons’ Christmas than going to church – makes you wonder what the phrase even means. It doesn’t just mean do-goodery, though that is important. About 10 million Britons get help from a church-based group every year. If you see a queue of homeless people in a town centre at about 6 o’clock in the evening, you can bet there are a bunch of God-botherers handing out sandwiches at the other end of it. Where there is poverty, physical illness, mental illness, unemployment, the

When I was 21, I lived with a cult for a year. It was a commune really, a tight-knit group of Christians, but I’ll call it a cult because it was in Texas and for special occasions we all wore white. There were other cult markers, too: we had a charismatic leader; the younger kids were home-schooled; and, to my great excitement, one (now ex) member wrote a book after she left: I Can’t Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult. That I ended up there is a testament to the dangers of showing off. All those endless questions after finals, all those inquiring adults: ‘And what are you going to

Exciting news from the world of philosophy! Next year will see the 20th anniversary of the New Stoa, an online community of ‘all those who are Stoics and who wish to be known by the commitment they have made’. Stoicism, the philosophy of choice for sanctimonious Roman billionaires, is evidently making a comeback. Its appeal, to an age obsessed equally by smartphones and virtue signalling, is no great mystery, I suppose. Seneca, who served as Nero’s tutor and whose manipulation of the overseas currency markets may well have precipitated Boudicca’s revolt, was a Stoic. ‘Though finding fault with the rich, he acquired a fortune of 300,000,000 sesterces,’ wrote the historian

In his column last week, Rod Liddle suggested that an alleged fatwa by a Saudi Arabian cleric had said it was permissible to eat one’s wife when suffering from ‘severe hunger’ gave him (Rod) the go-ahead to eat his own wife. Not so, surely. In the Christian religion and, indeed, the secular law of the United Kingdom, one can have only one wife at a time. If one has only one wife, it would be quite wrong to eat her. Under Islam, one can have up to four. Obviously this generous provision creates ‘spares’. Until recently, British marriage law was hidebound by tradition, but, before the last election, Parliament voted