Religion

Suppose you were a white supremacist who wanted to keep Muslim children down. Or suppose you were a Machiavellian middle-class parent, who wanted to handicap the competition your child would face when the race for university places began. In either case, you would be delighted by what is happening at St Stephen’s primary school in Newham. Despite having an intake of poor children from Pakistani and African families, the head Neena Lall and chair of the governors Arif Qawi transformed it into one of the best state primaries in England. Now it is falling apart. Qawi resigned last week. Lall faces angry parents, mosque leaders, and activists whipped up by the

I was listening to Thought for The Day on Radio 4 the other morning. Well, I say listening, as most parents will know, that is something you can do only in an empty house. What I mean is: the radio was on, a religious man was speaking and I caught probably every fourth or fifth word in between shouting at my kids to hurry up. Anyway, the gist of what the man was saying was that it is good to be bored as it frees up the brain, and going to church may well be one of the last places on earth where that is entirely and routinely possible. I

Ever willing to exploit my children, I asked them yesterday just how many actual English children there were in their class at school – one’s at primary, the other, secondary. What, English-English, they said reasonably? You mean, both parents, plus born here? Yes, I said, which meant they couldn’t count themselves – they were born in Dublin. They thought about it for a bit. The elder said, counting on his fingers, that five out of 27 were English-English, with another three more half and half. My daughter counted 10 out of 27, if you include pupils from Guernsey and Northern Ireland, which I unwillingly conceded might count as British from

Twitter brings out a mean streak in some people that can take the breath away. And I should know. I was re-reading my old tweets the other day and thinking: good God, if this was my actual conversation at a dinner party I’d have to get my coat – remember the bloke in The Fast Show? – right after the soup. In the new Holy Smoke podcast, I’m joined by Harry Mount, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray to discuss the warping of our personalities by social media. Also, the complete failure of religious leaders to address the moral dilemmas it throws at us every day: bishops, being hopeless at Twitter

The doctrine of progress implies that things get better. This is clearly true in terms of scientific knowledge, though not necessarily of how that scientific knowledge is applied. It has proved broadly true, in our lifetimes, about economic and political freedom, though not so decisively that we can all sit back and relax. Is it also true of virtue? We often praise ourselves for having cast aside prejudice, taboo, imperialism, sexism and so on, but can we truthfully say that we are, on average, morally better people than our ancestors? We might simply be blind to different things. It is not difficult to make a list of virtues that are

We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Damian Thompson on Pope Francis: On 2 January, the Vatican published a letter from Pope Francis to the world’s bishops in which he reminded them that they must show ‘zero tolerance’ towards child abuse. The next day, the American Week magazine published an article that told the story of ‘Don Mercedes’ — Fr Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest with a passion for expensive cars and underage boys. In 2012, Pope Benedict stripped Inzoli of his priestly faculties, effectively defrocking him. In 2014, however, they were restored to him — by Pope Francis, who warned him to

So the BBC resolves to improve its treatment of religion, to take it more seriously as a major force in our culture. Good. But if clumsily undertaken such intentions can backfire, and deepen the liberal elite’s disdain for religion. Imagine if Thought for the Day was doubled in length, or if Songs of Praise was aired twice a week. The challenge is to find new forms of religious broadcasting that unsettle assumptions. I can only think of one example of this in the last decade: Rev, the sitcom that combined affection for the C of E with satire. Because it was irreverent, it could also be profoundly sympathetic – it

A bishop of the Church of England cannot really express his or her view on gay marriage. The secular media has little interest in asking about anything else. Result: bishops sound comically evasive, having to ignore repeated questions on the issue with Michael Howardish determination. This is what happened in the newly-appointed Bishop of London Sarah Mullally’s first grilling on the Today programme. This is what she should have said: ‘I don’t know. Sorry, but I don’t know what line the Church should take on gay marriage, or the ordination of homosexuals. I reject the secular assumption that everyone ought to have a firm opinion on every issue. So I

The Church of England being what it is, it was pretty well inevitable that the new Bishop of London should be a woman and as it happens the woman in question is Sarah Mullally, 55, at present suffragan bishop of Exeter. I spoke to her this morning before Downing Street made the announcement – wouldn’t you just love to know if the PM added her mite? – and the bishop designate gave every impression of being a nice and decent person, and a committed, almost certainly evangelical, Christian. Very much in the mould then of another evangelical, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also a former Chief Nursing Officer who worked

Kicked ‘like a football’ were the words used by a Pakistani Christian to describe a brutal assault that left him unconscious outside a restaurant in Derby last month. The victim, Tajamal Amar, claims Muslim men singled him out for offence he’d caused by displaying a cross and two large red poppies on his car, and for being a Kaffir – a derogatory term for non-Muslims. As it happens, the attack occurred towards the end of National Hate Crime Awareness Week, and has been recorded as a hate crime. The British Pakistani Christian Association, a group who’ve been supporting Amar, inform me his wife and daughter have been moved to a

I sometimes identify with something that Evelyn Waugh once said. A friend asked him how come he claimed to be a Christian, being such a cantankerous curmudgeon, such a master of cruel wit. Well, Waugh replied, imagine how horrid I’d be if I didn’t try to be a Christian. There’s something authentically Christian in that answer – an admission that we can never be very successful Christians. Because it demands so much, this religion is an awkward commitment, full of tension and ambiguity. Because it demands so much, we can be honest about our failure. For me, this capacity for honesty is crucial. If I felt there was no room