Religion

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

Is there any truth in the Christian revival?

25 min listen

There has been a lot of speculation about a ‘quiet revival’ of Christianity happening amongst the younger generations – including on this podcast. Much of this traces back to a survey conducted by the Bible Society last year. Respected demographer Conrad Hackett of the Pew Research Center joins Damian Thompson to explain the truth behind the statistics, and why we have to be wary of the methodology used by different polls. Some interesting facts: Christians remain the largest religious group in the world, following by Muslims and then the religiously non-affiliated; while Europe was home to the largest number of Christians as recently as 2010, sub-saharan Africa now has the

Is there any truth in the Christian revival?

Tuesday

Rowan Williams

Why Leonard Cohen felt empowered to pronounce benedictions

If it is true that a serious artist is one with the capacity to go on reinventing who they are in their work, Leonard Cohen unquestionably counts as serious. Not that anyone is likely to think of him as frivolous, exactly. While the famously acid description of his songs as ‘music to slit your wrists to’ is hardly fair, the whole persona, the register of his writing and performing, resists any mood of simple celebration. The ‘cold and… broken Hallelujah’ of his most celebrated and over-exposed song, the ‘broken hill’ from which praise is uttered (in ‘If It Be Your Will’), reminds us unsparingly of where he believed his music

Sunday

Sean Thomas

Moltbook: has AI created its own religion?

20 min listen

What did you most recently use Artificial Intelligence for? For most people, the answer would be as a glorified search function, using services like Chat GPT to ask questions, draft text and even produce images – like the Chat GPT generated thumbnail image for this episode. The capability of AI far exceeds this most though. Sean Thomas joins Damian Thompson for this episode of Holy Smoke to talk about ‘Moltbook’, a social network built exclusively for AI agents – and which has now created its own AI ‘religion’. What does this mean for humankind? Is AI just replicating a belief impulse, to the extent that one exists within humans? And

Moltbook: has AI created its own religion?

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

What Catholics get wrong about assisted dying

The Catholic Church has always been remarkably relaxed about sin. It becomes distinctly jumpy, however, when it encounters any challenge to the Church’s designation of what is sinful. Human beings (it suspects) are and always will be sinners. The Church has no problem in dealing with sinners: they should confess. Absolution may be available, dispensed by a priesthood who have privileged access to the Almighty, and can intercede. It isn’t really the commission of a sin that worries the Church. It’s the rejection of a doctrine ‘We will tell you what’s unclean in the eyes of God. We also offer a laundry service to which we hold the monopoly.’ To

Saturday

Damian Thompson

Why did Pope Leo choose a 'safe pair of hands' for Westminster?

32 min listen

The next Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Richard Moth, will be installed in his cathedral on February 14. Bishop Moth, formerly of Arundel and Brighton, is seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’. But why didn’t the job go to a more charismatic figure, such as Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark? What does this low-key appointment tell us about Pope Leo’s vision for the Church? Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, a moral theologian and priest of Arundel and Brighton – and friend of Holy Smoke, joins Damian Thompson for a frank and wide-ranging discussion about the problems facing the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

What can we expect from the new Archbishop of Westminster?

Sunday

Damian Thompson

The historic value of English churches – with Daniel Wilson

22 min listen

When was the last time you visited your local parish church? Historian and social media influencer Daniel Wilson joins Damian Thompson to encourage more people to visit their local churches – not just as a centre of worship but as a historical treasure trove. Daniel takes us through some of his favourite examples of medieval architecture, as he emphasises the importance of being a ‘tourist in your own neighbourhood’. For more from Daniel, you can find him on Instagram and TikTok: @greatbritisharchitecture Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Melissa Kite

My house is devouring me (and my relationship)

The panic of another season bore down on me as the builder boyfriend painted the breakfast room with the green paint I’d chosen. But he couldn’t paint fast enough for my liking and we started to have the most terrible rows. Despite us being fully booked last summer, I had come to the view that the whole thing wasn’t viable and we were bound to go under. I started looking up estate agents who market big old piles in Ireland to stupid people in America. This house is like a monster devouring my money faster than I can feed it. I fed the beast by filling the oil tank to

Friday

Damian Thompson

Iran: why theocracies survive – with Peter Frankopan

25 min listen

In the 21st century, the theocratic nature of the Iranian regime – ruled by senior Shia clerics – appears to be a rarity. The constitutional role of religion is perhaps matched only by the Vatican City and Afghanistan, though these vary in terms of autocracy – as evidenced by the brutal suppression of protests across Iran in the past few weeks. The regime, installed following the 1979 revolution and led first by Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khameini, has proven remarkably resilient; how has it survived so long? Peter Frankopan – professor of global history at Oxford University – joins Damian Thompson to discuss the tensions associated with state control

Wednesday

Melissa Kite

My parents have driven us to boiling point

After two weeks of us heating the house to the temperature my nearly 90-year-old father wanted it, the door to the guest bedroom would no longer shut. The central heating had swollen the wood so much that it had to be planed down. The builder boyfriend and I had been lying in bed each night with the radiators in our bedroom off and the windows wide open. I’d venture out into the hallway at 3 a.m. to investigate why we were still too hot and a wall of heat would hit me. The thermostat I had left on tick-over was rammed to the far right once more and the boiler

Tuesday

Helen Barrett

The spiritual yearnings of David Bowie

What did David Bowie mean by ‘No confessions/ No religion’ in his lyrics to ‘Modern Love’? Peter Ormerod proposes what at first seems an unlikely theory – that Bowie was talking about Gnosticism, the complex spiritual, though not religious, belief that God lies beyond the material world and that all humans carry a divine spark within. Ormerod admits that perceiving intellectual depths in a hit single sounds far-fetched – ‘an attempt to find weight in a scrap of fluff’. But he points out that Gnosticism, with its rejection of organised religion and its trust in God and man, was one of Bowie’s lifelong obsessions: a sincere enthusiasm he shared with

Monday

Theo Hobson

At 53, I’m training to be a priest

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

Lionel Shriver

‘Islamist’ is a dishonest confection

Convicted last month of plotting what could have proved the worst terrorist attack in British history, Walid Saadaoui had hoped to murder at least 50 people in Prestwich, because ‘Prestwich is full of Jews’. He was caught purchasing four AK-47s, two handguns and 1,200 rounds of ammunition. For Saadaoui’s fires of righteousness on social media had earlier drawn the eye of British law enforcement. ‘Avenge your religion Oh Muslims in Europe,’ he posted. ‘I pray to you not to catch me until I break my thirst with Jews, Christians and their proxies’ blood.’ Thus Saadaoui instructed an undercover officer: ‘Grab a Jewish person and slaughter him and remove his head,

Charlotte Eagar

Iranians are risking everything to convert to Christianity

Apostasy – specifically, conversion to Christianity from Islam – is punishable by death in Iran. Suspected Christians are routinely imprisoned and tortured. Despite this, evangelical Christianity is sweeping through Iran. A 2020 survey of 50,000 Iranians conducted by a Dutch NGO, the Group for Analysing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran, suggests that there could be more than 1.2 million Christian converts. In a country with a population of 90 million, that’s a sizeable portion – and it’s growing fast. ‘It’s probably more like two million today,’ says Father Jonathan Samadi, founder of the Persian Anglican Community of London. ‘The numbers increase every year.’ Father Jonathan converted as a young man,

Wednesday

Damian Thompson

How transformative has 2025 been for Christianity?

21 min listen

Anglican author The Rev’d Fergus Butler-Gallie, Catholic priest Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith and Evangelical commentator Fleur Meston join Damian Thompson to reflect on 2025. They discuss Pope Leo XIV’s leadership so far, the choice of Dame Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury and why Christianity has been coopted by the far right. Plus, was the ‘quiet revival’ of Church-going the start of a trend – or just a blip? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Tuesday

Rory Sutherland

Why religious societies succeed – with Rory Sutherland

35 min listen

Advertising guru – and the Spectator’s Wiki Man columnist – Rory Sutherland joins Damian Thompson for this episode of Holy Smoke. In a wide ranging discussion, from Sigmund Freud and Max Weber to Quakers and Mormons, they discuss how some religious communities seem to be predisposed to success by virtue of their beliefs. How do spiritual choices affect consumer choices? Between Android and Apple, which is more Protestant and which is more Catholic? And what can modern Churches learn from Capitalism? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

What makes a ghost Catholic or Protestant?

W.H. Auden, in his essay on detective fiction, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, asked: ‘Is it an accident that the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries?’ He was thinking about confession and how this changes things. In Auden’s view, murder is an offence against God and society and when it happens it shows that some member of society is no longer in a state of grace. But confession gives a transgressor a means of returning to a state of grace, so the moral order can be restored without recourse to a policeman. You wonder: do ghost stories too flourish most in a Protestant (or formerly Protestant) society? There have

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

How was Commercial Christmas born?

31 min listen

Historian and writer Charles Coulombe joins Damian Thompson to talk about how Christmas has changed over the past two centuries, the differences between Catholic and Anglican Christmas – and how a modern, commercial Christmas developed over time. Plus, he takes us through the origins of Christmas traditions from Christmas trees to Advent and whether we should say ‘Happy’ or ‘Merry’ Christmas.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Why is Westminster Cathedral leaving Jesus in the dark?

Sitting beneath the looming darkness of the unfinished ceiling of Westminster Cathedral, I found myself praying. I didn’t even know why, but I was walking past during a trip to London and I decided to go in, and I sat down, and then a priest came and began to say mass so I stayed, not knowing what was about to happen back in Ireland to the builder boyfriend, and not having any real feeling that you could call premonition – unless you count an overwhelming urge to be sitting in a cathedral praying, when I have passed there many times on similar trips and never once gone in. It was

Thursday

Madeline Grant

How America’s Wasps lost their sting

They moved, with a sort of nonchalant intent, up the aisle to make communion with their God; the men in bow ties and immaculate blazers, the women in pearls. They spent the service making small bows, singing (but not too loudly) and wearing looks of pacific – or rather, north Atlantic – calm. These were the Wasps and this was St Thomas Fifth Avenue, one of their high temples in New York, where they come for their moments of triumph and where the world often bids them adieu. It was hard to tell from those gathered on a recent Sunday morning if the stiffness of their physical motions was the

Sunday

Charles Moore

How did faith shape Thatcher?

38 min listen

How did faith shape Margaret Thatcher’s politics? To mark the centenary month of Margaret Thatcher’s birth, Damian Thompson introduces a conversation between the Spectator’s Natasha Feroze, Thatcher’s biographer Lord Moore and Bishop Chartres who delivered the eulogy at her funeral. They discuss her relationship with faith, how both her family background and her training as a scientist influenced her beliefs and her understanding of the relationship between wealth and society based on Jesus’s parables. Plus – what would Thatcher have made of the much talked about ‘Christian revival’ in the West? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.