Theo Hobson is the author of seven books, including God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values
I haven’t written a poem in memory of Biddy Baxter, stern matriarch of Blue Peter, who died yesterday but here is one I made earlier. First, a brief thought on the programme that she edited from 1962-1988. On one level, it was just a magazine show for children – a bit of chat, a few
There are two proper responses to pornography it: to condemn it, and to ignore it. There are two other responses. One is to use it. It doesn’t bother me too much if some men are enriching internet prostitutes while debasing themselves, as long as everyone shuts up about it. It’s the final possible response to
Thomas More has a richly ambiguous place in our religious and political history. Like a brave hero of conscience, he defied the will of a tyrant, even unto death. A herald of modern liberty, then? Not quite. Before he found himself on the wrong end of the axe, as Lord Chancellor he calmly sent many
Perhaps we are living in the early sixteenth century. Think of the ideology of the West as a sort of religion. It needs a reformation, a purging, a back to basics movement. In a sense this is well underway: for many years now, countless thinkers have attacked the flaws and complacency of the dominant Western
I watched most of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande when it was on TV some months back. I wondered whether to write something about it. But I can’t write about every representation of sex that offends me. Who am I – Mary Whitehouse? Thankfully Dame Emma Thompson, the star of that film, has now
I managed to sit through most of Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius the other night. I endured luvvies and minor academics and even Cherie Blair, all wide-eyed at the brilliance of their heroine. She was inevitably presented as edgy and funny and brave and ground-breaking and mould-breaking and ball-breaking and oozing girl power. One of
Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week, was one of the most influential thinkers of the past 50 years. It is hard to think of any other philosopher writing in the late 20th-century who has had such an impact. He might be less famous than Foucault or Derrida, but it is his conservative brand of postmodernism
The Church of England’s various travails and dilemmas – on controversial issues, like sexuality and safeguarding – are on one level beside the point. Even if it managed to solve these problems, the Church’s drift to the margins of our culture looks likely to continue. The really fundamental issue is how the CofE can reverse
Why is the pornification of our culture so difficult to oppose? Partly because it takes subtly different forms. There used to be prostitutes and pornographers. Now, there are online influencers like Lily Phillips, subject of the documentary I Slept With 100 Men in One Day. These influencers sometimes talk like feminist activists, too. The idea that
The death of a Pope is a time for assorted reflections on the Catholic Church. Protestants can be wary of speaking up. Even the word ‘Protestant’ is not a very familiar one these days. Sure, most of us know that the Church of England is Protestant, and that Luther was Protestant and that the Reformation
I wasn’t intending to write about Lily Phillips again. Her story would ideally be ignored. But if it does appear in the media, we must be vigilant about how it is represented, especially if the BBC is doing the representing. On some issues, neutrality is a bogus aspiration. It means allowing a very dubious narrative
My daughter has asked for my advice about what to study at university. Yeah right. She’d rather eat her own hoodie. But I’m going to give it anyway. She is wavering between history and English. Do both, I say. But not many universities offer a joint honours degree, and her (otherwise excellent) teachers seem to
Many Brits who were raised as Christians have abandoned their faith, according to a report by the Pew Research Centre. The survey found that 38 per cent of those brought up as Christians are ‘religiously unaffiliated’, while 4 per cent had converted to other religions. The verdict on religion seems gloomy. But I have a
I recently offered my services as a part-time RE teacher to my local comp, an inner-city affair with a Muslim majority. Yes please, said the nice headmistress: the Covid-blunted Year 11s needed all the help they could get with GCSE revision. The syllabus consisted of Christianity and Islam. What could go wrong? The first thing
Do kids still have hobbies? Maybe hobbies isn’t quite the right word. What I mean is a passionate interest in something fairly adult, something more than playing with toys. For example, a child might get precociously into theatre or birdwatching or medieval history and have a first taste of adult enthusiasm for something. I was
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This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always
This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful. I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is that still a big deal
Jordan Peterson is a cross between a student who has lately discovered the meaning of life, and a professor who has known it all along. In an interview in this week’s Spectator, the former persona is sandwiched between two slices of the latter. First he holds forth about the Bible in a ponderous way, in
I was planning to give my mother-in-law the new biography of Ronald Blythe this Christmas. Then I read a review and had second thoughts. I was aware the late chronicler of rural parish life had a bohemian side, but it seems that it was more extensive than I had guessed. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, Patrick
Parish churches are in trouble: about fifty churches close every year, according to a report from Civitas. The review, published last month, strongly echoes the case of the Save the Parish campaign: the Church of England’s leadership has failed to support local parishes, diverting funding to more modern-sounding initiatives. About twenty years ago some bright
