Theo Hobson is the author of seven books, including God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values
Imagine being in love with someone who ignores you eleven months of the year, then suddenly seems really into you. Instead of elation you feel a weird form of pain as your beloved finally smiles on you, and finds you interesting, for you know that it is just a seasonal thing, and that frosty indifference
George Eliot deserves some praise 200 years after her birth. But the sort of praise she is getting is predictably blinkered by the literary assumptions of our day. She is celebrated as the great fore-runner of the secular feminist literary culture of today, as if she was Margaret Atwood in lace, or Zadie Smith in
While launching her campaign to be returned as MP for North West Durham, Laura Pidcock revealed the barmy self-righteousness that has taken over the Labour party. This is how she wrapped up her speech: ‘I know it has been a long time coming, but we are on the path to justice. And because people know
So there is more than one Old Etonian hoping to ride to the nation’s rescue. My first reaction to the news that Justin Welby is involved in plans for a citizens’ assembly to find an alternative to a no-deal Brexit was sceptical. Too late for such an initiative. Give Boris a chance to get on with
I don’t pretend to have had extensive discussions about religion with our new Prime Minister, but I did have a couple of brief ones when he edited my first Spectator articles. We once discussed Christian and Muslim ideas of martyrdom, and he was suddenly reminded of a hymn he liked at Eton which he proceeded
Why does the left have a problem with Jews? I don’t think the current analysis goes deep enough. We need to take two or three steps back from recent political events. The key concept is universalism. Socialism is a universalist ideology: it thinks it has a solution to the world’s problems that everyone ought to
Vincent Van Gogh has been airbrushed by the secular arts media. I have not yet seen the new exhibition at Tate Britain about his London years, so I can only comment on the publicity I have read and heard. This arts chatter downplays, or even ignores, the central feature of his life at this time:
I have heard surprisingly few Catholic responses to this week’s news of the conviction of Cardinal George Pell. I guess those who are not in denial are in shock. Let me interrupt the stunned silence with an outsider’s perspective. This is not just another paedophile priest story – Pell was a key figure in the
General Synod has repealed the old law that every Anglican church must hold a Sunday service. It’s not really the end of an era, because the law has been flouted for decades: many rural vicars are in charge of a large handful of churches and cannot hold services at all of them every week. It’s
Dr Victoria Bateman’s naked Brexit stunt should not be seen in terms of modern feminism but in terms of early modern religious performance art, especially that of the Ranters and Quakers. The trauma of the seventeenth century English civil war caused some strange religious groups to emerge, and some of them went in for shocking
There’s an interesting article in the Guardian about the study of English at university. It’s in decline, says Susannah Rustin, which is a shame. Bright youngsters who might once have signed up to a few years of sonnets and Chaucer are feeling pressured to study something more useful like engineering. Let them, and those influencing
Anyone for Whexit? I voted Remain. The theoretical arguments seemed finely balanced, so boring old pragmatism decided it. On the one hand I feel vindicated by the current shambles. But on the other hand, oddly enough, I have become more conscious of the case for leaving. And if we really are leaving it seems worthwhile to accentuate
Sorry to sound sectarian, but the Archbishop of Canterbury should really be able to articulate a preference for Anglicanism over other variants of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism. Interviewed here in this week’s Spectator, he was more or less invited to do so; instead he said that he was entirely positive about Anglican priests converting to Rome.
The fact that Naked Attraction is still being broadcast after a year or so strikes me as proof that there is something very wrong with our culture. In a healthy culture it would have been howled offstage after a few weeks, and the moral babies who made it shunned, and firmer procedures put in place
Ever since ‘Brexit’ was first breathed, there have been comparisons with Henry VIII’s break with Rome. At first such comparisons seemed a bit far-fetched, for there are some big differences between the Catholic Church and the EU, and between Protestantism and zeal for Brexit. But now they seem uncannily apt. For it looks as if
Jonathan Sacks’ radio series Morality in the 21st Century is a useful introduction to the subject, with some good contributions from world-renowned experts, but it’s rather one-sided. Almost all of these world-renowned experts (such as Jordan Peterson, Robert Putnam, David Brooks) share his approach. There is not much airing of other views, or questioning of
The Labour Party’s tangles over anti-Semitism and Zionism raise basic questions about Western values that are routinely ignored. But sometimes we do need to go back to basics. A central plank of the ideology of the West is pluralism – the belief that a state should allow the co-existence of various ethnicities and religions, and
According to the Times, a new academic study finds that nations become richer when they become more secular. It contests the traditional idea that a nation gets rich, probably with the help of Protestantism, and then loses interest in religion. Instead, a nation first becomes secular, then becomes rich. There might be some truth in
My opinion of Justin Welby has been rising over the last few years. At first he seemed a text-book public school Evangelical, a sad contrast to the Welsh wizard Williams. But he proved himself good at the job, which is largely about seeming a good egg while evading awkward doctrinal questions. Having read his book Reimagining Britain,
Heterosexuality is marginalised by our liberal arts culture. Not by culture in general: it still allows boy-meets-girl to be celebrated by the masses, sort of (Love Island, Harry and Meghan). But liberal arts culture scorns the crude mechanical drudge of heterosexual coupling. Last night I saw a short monologue on BBC4, one of the series
