Christianity

I recently met an old friend at a party. She works for a Christian NGO. Later that evening we were introduced to a man with a background in software engineering. Having learnt about my friend’s job and then discovered that she goes to church, he asked her how old she thought the universe is. Her jaw dropped a bit. But she was composed enough to reply with a counter-question. ‘Did you know that it was a Catholic priest [the cosmologist Georges LeMaître] who proposed the Big Bang theory in the first place?’ Now it was the engineer’s turn to look shocked. Some may dismiss this exchange as a flash in

There is no faster way to get yourself classed as dim than by admitting that you hold religious belief, especially Christian belief. Anti-Catholicism used to be the anti-Semitism of intellectuals; now Catholics get no special attention. All believing Christians are regarded as stupid, eccentric or malevolent. Some conservatives will make the case for the social usefulness of Christian values. The conservative asks: if society prospered with these traditions and customs, is it really wise to throw them away without a moment’s hesitation? That is just what the West is doing, especially the Anglophone West. Britain, Australia and even the God-fearing United States are becoming atheist societies. Britain is more atheist

The time has come to disestablish the Church of England. As a deeply partisan Prayer Book Anglican – a churchmanship naturally inclined to support the cause of antidisestablishmentarianism – I say that rather grudgingly. But it pains me to admit the established church and mother church of Anglicanism is no longer fit for purpose. Atheists, militant secularists and those of non-Christian faiths have long supported my newly-held position, yet they often do so for other reasons, namely declining church attendance. They might claim that the Anglican expression of Christianity has little creditability as a state church if, practically speaking, nobody goes to services on a regular basis. And they might have

Last week Tom Holland reflected on the ‘utter strangeness’ of Christianity’s claim that Christ’s death on the cross was a sign of strength. St Paul agreed: ‘We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the gentiles [correcting the SJV ‘Greeks’] foolishness.’ So did pagan philosophers, who argued fiercely about the nature of the gods. One such was Celsus (2nd C ad), who wrote an anti-Christian diatribe, ‘The True Doctrine’. It survives only in the quotations used by Origen in refuting it (248 ad). Though Celsus had a sense of humour (Christians respected the cross as the tree of life: had Jesus been thrown off a cliff,