Easter

Sunday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Brace yourself for the real experience of going to a rural parish service on Easter Sunday

‘And we extend a special welcome to all our visitors here today.’ That’s the vicar speaking; and this Sunday is one of the two days in the year when you are likely to be one of those visitors. You’re spending Easter with in-laws or friends who live in the country. Easter wouldn’t feel like Easter without Eucharist at the local C of E church after the first mini-egg of the day, so here you are, in tweed and wool, breathing in the timeless smell of damp and candle-wax as you try to prop up the paperback hymn book called Praise! on the pew shelf but it is too big and keeps flopping forward.

Christian Guy

Why church leaders are wrong to attack welfare cuts

Another day, another welfare row. The practical outworking of the Government's most controversial idea - that people on welfare should actually be better off in work, continues to spark outrage. Today it is church leaders who line up to try to land punches on Iain Duncan Smith, making an attack on his decision that welfare payments (like the average salary) should not keep pace with inflation. In leading the biggest package of welfare reform since the first foundation stone of social security was laid by William Beveridge, IDS  is familiar with the poverty lobby's ongoing shock-and-awe strategy. Yet like so many who have gone before, today's critics miss the bigger picture.

Friday

Camilla Swift

Crime fiction at Easter? Look no further than our Scandinavian neighbours

If you thought that winter in Britain had gone on long enough this year, then spare a thought for the Norwegians. Winters in Norway are famously long, dark and bitter, and – for those who experience them year upon year – can be incredibly boring. During one such winter, in February 1923, two Norwegians called Nordahl Grieg and Nils Lie decided to alleviate their boredom by writing a book. The theme? A train robbery; or more specifically, a looting of the train to Bergen. The title of the book? The Bergen train was robbed in the night (or, in its original Norwegian: Bergenstoget plyndret i natt). Having written the book, the next step was to convince people to buy it, and here the authors came up with a very cunning plan indeed.

Roger Scruton

Holy Week is a time for contemplation and renewal

Good Friday is a day for contemplation. If you have time, do read Roger Scruton’s piece in the latest issue of the Spectator. It is, among other things, a deep consideration of the damage caused by our society’s veneration of the trivial and transient. Here is a short excerpt: Wherever we find the cult of celebrity, therefore, we find deep unhappiness. ‘Fun’ has become the highest good, but fun is always out of reach, available only in that other and unattainable world where the stars are dancing. Meanwhile envy and resentment colour the world below, and there is no relief save the pleasures of consumption.

Alex Massie

Happy Easter | 29 March 2013

I'm away to Jura* for the Easter weekend, so it's improbable there will be much posting happening around here. I hope you all have a splendid weekend, especially those of you for whom this is a properly significant time of year. See you next week, so to speak. *That's a view towards Mull, taken from Glengarrisdale Bay on Jura's uninhabited west coast.

Sunday

The Spectator

The decline of the spirit

In celebration of the feast of Easter, we've dug out this profound leader from March 1975, which looks at the ever-evolving relationship of church and state.  The Church, the State and the decline of the spirit, The Spectator, 29 March 1975 Spring is a time of rebirth; yet it is also the time of the death of Christ. It is the time when "Jesus knew that his hour would come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end" (John 13.i). In the Spring and Easter of 1975 there is much evidence of the death and of the departure of the spirit of Christ, but precious little evidence of rebirth or revival, whether in religious affairs or in the affairs of the state.