Christianity

No to Reform Sir: Perhaps because I have been candid about the Conservative party’s failures in office, I am mooted as being of interest to Reform by your political editor (‘14 questions for 2026’, 3 January). But acknowledging failures is not a prelude to defection; it is the necessary starting point of renewal. When Reform speaks of a ‘uniparty’, it implies that swapping politicians is enough. It is not. The crisis of the British state runs far deeper. Governments are in office, not power, because of the pernicious shift we have seen over the past 30 years from a political constitutionalism to a legal one. On immigration, human rights, energy

I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate. My motivation for wanting to be a priest is selfish. I want more joy in my life. You might feel that joy is to be found in extreme sports, or pop concerts, or snorting coke from the midriffs of hookers. But I think you mean pleasure. Joy is deeper, linked to a sense of the goodness of existence. It seems to me that joy is to be found in doing cultural things. I don’t mean going to plays or art galleries; I mean cultural things that are very participatory and democratic. Things

A meeting planned in secret. A message deemed subversive. The authorities both antagonised and confused. The gatherings of the early Church in the time of the Roman Empire? Or Tommy Robinson’s proposed carol concert at an as yet undisclosed London location, proclaimed as the event to put ‘Christ back into Christmas’? To draw even the most strained comparison between the two would seem to offend most mainstream sensibilities. Established churches across the country have reacted with horror and disdain at the former football hooligan and recent prison inmate claiming to be Christianity’s champion this Christmas. Recall the example of Jesus, whose love was not rationed and whose message was for

One day while walking in Peckham Rye Park, William Blake saw angels sitting in the trees: ‘bright angelic wings bespangled every bough like stars’. He was eight years old. His fascination – some have called it obsession – with angels lasted for the rest of his life. When he sat to have his portrait painted by Thomas Phillips, the two men began to argue about who painted a better angel, Michelangelo or Raphael. Phillips, not unreasonably, suggested that since Blake had never seen even an engraving by Michelangelo, he was not qualified to give an opinion on the matter. ‘But I speak from the opinion of a friend who could