Theo Hobson is the author of seven books, including God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values
Last Friday I took part in a debate entitled ‘Does Islam Need a Reformation?’ It was run by the Muslim group IREA. I was a bit wary. I’ve been to a couple of Muslim-run debates and round-table discussions in which the mainly Muslim participants veered off-topic and took turns to attack Western foreign policy and to
Religion remains a surprisingly popular subject for plays. It’s partly because there’s already a core of theatricality there, in the rituals, the dressing-up and the little shibboleths of piety. In one way or another, religion involves performing. And religion plays the role of Hogwarts in Harry Potter — an enclosed world, a game with rules.
Niall Ferguson got me thinking about this in his Sunday Times piece, in which he rejected the allure of Brexit and declared himself an ‘Anglosceptic’. He concluded: ‘In the days before empire, Henry VIII’s version of Brexit was to renounce Roman Catholicism and divorce Catherine of Aragon. A true sceptic in those days would have
What do they mean, these Islamofascists, by using children in their publicity films? Last month one of their films featured a cute British kid of about six called Isa Dare: he looked on admiringly and then threatened the kaffir. Earlier this month a new film showed an English-speaking boy of about ten actually beheading a Syrian
Christian columnists of left (Giles Fraser) and right (Charles Moore, Peter Hitchens) agree: Bishop Bell has been most sorely wronged. The Church should not have compensated the person he allegedly abused about seventy years ago. It has damaged the reputation of one of its major figures, without any sort of trial taking place. I disagree.
There’s a spate of statistic-based stories about Christianity in decline. Recently we heard that under a million Brits now attend the CofE. Now we hear that the proportion of Britons who say they have no religion is creeping up to 50 per cent. Already, most white Britons identify as non-religious. It’s not really news. For decades
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
The new Charlie Hebdo cover is feeble. God with a machine-gun, looking over his shoulder, and the line ‘The Assassin is still at large’. It makes Richard Dawkins look nuanced. Religion is to blame? All religion? It feels dishonest, timid: a refusal to face the fact that it’s a particular form of religion that is
We should be more generous to refugees, said Justin Welby in his New Year message. Is he saying that the government should let more of them in? If so, should he be more specific? Does David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, have a point? He wrote on his website: ‘How wonderfully saintly it must feel
This sign adorns a local church in Harlesden. I suppose it could be called a Pop Annunciation. Who says religious art is stuck in the past? Then again, it is a perennial – and fascinating – question in Christian art: how much contemporary life to include in biblical scenes. For centuries artists have shocked the public
A vicar called Paul Eddy has argued, in the Oxford church newspaper, that carol services should be more manly. For there are many men who only get this annual glimpse of church, and they should be challenged in their assumption that religion is a soppy women-and-children thing. He suggests showing a clip from an action
The new report by the Woolf Institute on religion in British public life is predictable stuff. It says that some reforms are needed, so that Britain’s pluralistic, largely secular character is better expressed in law. It recommends that the law that demands religious worship in school assemblies should be scrapped, that faith schools should move
The Times has a story for the first week of Advent, about baby Jesus and golden Daleks. An artist called Kate Richardson exhibited her work in a minor Cornish gallery. Some Christians complained about some of the paintings, and the exhibition was cancelled. The contentious works were copies of famous nativity paintings, in which a
A confusing story about RS (religious studies in schools) from last week has come to my attention. A group of parents brought a court case against the Department for Education: they complained that its new GCSE syllabus failed to include humanism. They won the case – sort of. The judge said that schools should not be
I promised to provide, in this space, a forum for thinking about ‘what we believe’. We the West. There are two articles worth noting in the last few days. Toby Young, right here in The Spectator, wondered how liberal values can be sexed up. Should we hope that potential Islamists will be won over by ‘a crash
Usama Hasan, an imam attached to the Quilliam Foundation, argues in the Times that Islam is steadily adapting to modernity. It has been doing so since the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire launched certain reforms. Islam should not be judged by a few marginal hiccups in this process. ‘Isis follows a fundamentalist and selective
Here we go again. The same mantras are dusted down: we must be more assertive of our values, less tolerant of extremism, we must challenge Muslim separatism more effectively, demand better integration. And in my opinion the same root question is somewhat evaded: what exactly are our values? It is easier to assume that this
If you’re anywhere near New York soon, don’t miss the exhibition of Picasso’s sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art. It has restored my love of the great magician. As a teenager I had eyes for no one else. He was the obvious god of modern art. Almost all previous art looked boring, and not
Some advice. Don’t watch the rugby world cup final with anyone too politically correct. My friend Tom and I were so busy arguing about the Haka that we missed the first try during the semi-final on Saturday. ‘I love a bit of primitive ritual’ I said, as the men in black became animated wood carvings that
Are you a Phillist or a Teddist? A Phillist is not a Philistine in a hurry, but one who warms to the sensibility of Philip Larkin. A Teddist prefers that of Ted Hughes. Recent BBC documentaries on each poet have clarified the choice. Whose vision of life is more convincing and compelling – the glum
