Religion

Thursday

Damian Thompson

Cardinal Pell returns to Australia ‘to clear his name’. But what are his chances of a fair trial?

Cardinal George Pell, the head of the Vatican's finances, has been charged with historic sex offences in his native Australia. He is returning there 'to clear his name'. 'I look forward to my day in court', he said at a press conference in Rome this morning. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't be looking forward to it. I believe – on the basis of the very sketchy evidence we've seen so far, and also my personal encounters with him – that the Cardinal is innocent of these charges. But what are his chances of a fair trial in Australia? Let me quote at length from an article by Angela Shanahan in The Australian, published on June 11. It seems to be behind a paywall, but this is what she had to say: Pell can never receive a fair trial.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

What should party leaders be allowed to believe?

‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of his party, ‘media & politicians have questions.’ So prelates now think complex theological concerns can be despatched within the Twitter limit of 140 characters. They cannot. Let me now unpack Dr Welby’s abbreviated consideration of this subject and examine what’s behind it, because the subject is of profound importance —and not only for Christians. Nobody has said Mr Farron can’t be in politics. He has been returned as MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale with the support of 26,686 voters.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Islamists have failed to divide France. Will they succeed in Britain?

Islamic State will be delighted by what happened outside Finsbury Park mosque in the early hours of Monday morning. In the space of three months they've achieved in Britain what they failed to pull off in France during five years, and provoked a retaliatory act. This is what they want. When the Syrian intellectual, Abu Moussab al-Souri, published his 1600-page manifesto in 2005, 'The Global Islamic Resistance Call', his stated goal was to plunge Europe into a war of religion.

Monday

Damian Thompson

Is the British government about to be held hostage by head-banging biblical fundamentalists?

Forgive the inflammatory headline, but that's the conclusion that millions of Britons have drawn from media descriptions of the DUP. Mainland commentators seem unable to make any distinction between the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by the late Ian Paisley, and his small Free Presbyterian sect, which is indeed influenced by American fundamentalism. We know the DUP is against abortion and gay marriage. But are its members also creationists who think the world was created 6,000 years ago? In this week's Holy Smoke podcast, Cristina Odone and I talk to Jon Anderson, a Northern Irish writer specialising in religious and political sectarianism. He lays some myths to rest. For example, the DUP is not the main party of the Orange Order.

Thursday

Theo Hobson

Embracing liberal Christianity can lead the Lib Dems out of irrelevance

In a sense it was the Liberal Democrats who did worst in this odd election. For the point of this party is to attract progressives who find Labour too dogmatic. And in the past two years Labour has been taken over by old-fashioned socialist dogma. It was the perfect opportunity to create a huge base of homeless New Labour voters. And then came Brexit, doubling this golden opportunity, for the Liberal Democrats were the main party of Brexit-scepticism. Why was the chance missed? Maybe English voters can only really believe in the two main parties, when it comes to governing. In fact, most of us find one of these parties only intermittently credible. So what’s the point of the Liberal Democrats? They must seek purpose and coherence in an idea, a cause.

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley

When will the Six-Day War finally end?

This week, Israel is marking the 50th anniversary of its improbable victory over Arab assassins. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser saw annihilation of the Jewish state as a uniting mission for his project of pan-Arab nationalism and had declared: 'Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood.' In June 1967, he enlisted Syria and Jordan in his plans for invasion and few thought Israel, then a meagre strip of land nine miles wide at its narrowest point, could withstand the onslaught. Herzl’s dream in the desert was about to be unwilled.

Tuesday

Paul Nizinskyj

Is Islam really the ‘religion of peace’?

On Sunday, in the hours after the London Bridge attack, Christians celebrated Pentecost - recalling when the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles to come out of hiding and proclaim the Good News. In light of the terrorist atrocity, my parish priest spoke on the fruits of this Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – as the correct response to such horror. It struck me that while we have become used to proclamations of Islam as the 'religion of peace', it's this message which sets Christianity apart in the face of persecution, and many of us forget the impact that the peaceful philosophy of Christianity has had on the world as we know it today.

Monday

Theo Hobson

It is not enough for Muslims to say ‘we condemn terrorism’

It is not enough for Muslims to say ‘We condemn terrorism’. Sure – we believe you. But something more is needed. What? It’s easy to get bogged down in the slightly wrong issue of violence and war. We should not expect Muslims to condemn all violence that claims a religious justification – for most war does tend to claim such justification, and an element of this lingers in the West, and few of us are complete pacifists. What we need to hear from British Muslims is that they reject the vision from which terrorism comes. It is a vision of society unified by one political and religious ideology. It is a vision of pluralism, and secular politics, swept aside by this vision. It is a theocratic vision.

Ed West

‘British Values’ won’t help in our fight against terrorism

Steve Hilton has called for Theresa May to resign as Prime Minister, blaming her for the security failures that lead to the three recent terror attacks. Without intimate knowledge of the workings of the Cameron administration it's hard to know where blame does lie. And there certainly has been a large increase in the number of terror plots for the authorities to deal with this year. The security services have an awesome job in keeping track of as many as 23,000 individuals, and so we may now be facing a sort of Israelification of British life, with barriers going up on London's bridges this morning. Already we now have bag searches around London museums and the occasional appearance of armed policemen outside cathedrals.

Damian Thompson

The Christian views of Theresa May and Tim Farron are way below the radar. And that’s how they like it

There's a mischievous, not to say malicious, Twitter photograph of Theresa May circulating this morning. It shows her sporting shoulder pads and severely slicked-backed boyish hair, campaigning in the 1987 general election. On top of it someone has added the words: 'Curbing the promotion of lesbianism in Merton's schools starts with girls having male role models in their lives'. Did she say it? No one can source the quote. But Mrs May, then as now a weekly churchgoing Anglican, did vote against the repeal of Section 28 in 2000. In those days she was an opponent of same-sex marriage, as was Tim Farron, also a weekly churchgoer. Both the Prime Minister and the Lib Dem leader held this view for religious reasons, though they preferred not to be drawn into theological debate.

Thursday

Laura Freeman

Woman to woman

Bump to bump they stand: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant, both apple-cheeked and glowing as expectant mothers should be. It is a moment of shared joy. The whispered intimacy of ‘I’m pregnant!’ ‘Me, too!’ Joseph and Zacharias stand sheepish in the background, as men do on such occasions. Joseph has more reason than most to feel left out. The baby isn’t his in the conventional sense. Zacharias has the look of a man overtaken by events. After so many ‘barren’ years, here is Elizabeth, pregnant and beaming with the future John the Baptist.

Stephen Bullivant

Labour’s abortion stance is the final straw

Well, that didn’t last long: in April, I rejoined the Labour Party. Last Sunday, I cancelled my subscription and cut up my membership card. Being part of the official opposition to a Tory Government, my conscience can live with; being the official opposition to the unborn, it cannot. I've always leaned towards backing Labour. And while my radicalism may have mellowed somewhat in my old age, I would certainly have voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the first leadership contest. So when the snap election was called, it seemed like an obvious move to put my money where my ballot is.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France has woken up to the danger of Islamism. Has Britain?

If there's one country that knows how Britain feels in the wake of last week's suicide bombing in Manchester, it's France. Similar horror has been visited on the French several times in the past five years with nearly 250 slaughtered at the hands of Islamic extremists, so the French are all too familiar with the grief, the rage and the shock still being felt across the Channel. But not Britain's incomprehension. At first, maybe, when Mohammed Merah shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren in a Toulouse playground five years ago, but since the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were slaughtered in January 2015 the French have understood what is going on.

Saturday

Luke de Pulford

Why are we airbrushing out Isis’s anti-Christian motives?

There's one headline you didn’t read in the aftermath of the Manchester attack:  Isis celebrates ‘crusaders’ attack and vows further violence against Christians Sounds silly, I know. But look at what Isis actually said in their statement after the bombing: I have not seen the word ‘Christian’ mentioned in a single report since this statement was published. Not surprising in itself, as mainstream hacks can be relied upon to avoid the ‘C’ word wherever possible. In this context, though, it’s a serious oversight.   For Isis, the West is a Christian construct. In their astonishingly retro outlook, we’re all under the religious authority of Rome - and that makes us all followers of the Cross.

Friday

Brendan O’Neill

Why is Jeremy Corbyn politicising Islamist murder?

Today, Jeremy Corbyn elevated terrorist attacks from acts of medieval mass murder to the level of a political statement. He injected the slaughter of pop fans and their parents with the frisson of anti-imperialism. He may not have meant to do this, but he did. When he said in his speech this morning that terrorism at home is a response to British militarism overseas, he imbued that terrorism with political meaning, even with a smidgen of progressiveness. This violence is anti-war, he is suggesting. He’s in serious danger of giving Salman Abedi a posthumous moral boost. Corbyn called for honesty about the ‘connections’ between ‘wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home’.

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Sado-erotic review

The Olivier describes Salomé by Yaël Farber as a ‘new’ play. Not quite. It premièred in Washington a couple of years ago. And I bet Farber was thrilled at the chance to direct this revival at the National’s biggest and best equipped stage. She approaches the Olivier’s effects department like a pyromaniac in a firework factory. She wants everything to go off at once. And it does. Goatherds yodel. Bells bong. Flutes warble. Birds parp. A revolving conveyor belt twirls spare actors around the stage in dizzy circles. Chord surges swell and fade on the soundtrack. Kneeling shepherdesses sift mounds of soap powder into mahogany salad bowls.

Wednesday

Damian Thompson

Pope Francis’s liberal fan club visibly upset after he hits it off with Trump

Pope Francis met President Trump this morning and they appear to have hit it off. After a 30-minute meeting in the Vatican, the president emerged beaming, describing the private audience as 'the honour of a lifetime'. The Pope, too, was described as 'grinning from ear to ear'. We don't know if the two men discussed global warming, on which they famously disagree. Francis did give Trump a copy of Laudato Si', his encyclical on the environment – but as Christoper Lamb, Rome correspondent of the left-wing Tablet, glumly tweeted: 'No mention of climate change in Vatican statement'. Lamb is not a happy bunny today.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 18 May 2017

Libyan solution Sir: Boris Johnson correctly reports glimmers of hope in Libya, but to say its problems can be solved by political will risks falling into the same trap of wishful thinking that has hobbled the international community’s intervention there (‘Libya’s best hope’, 13 May). To fix Libya, its political process must be restructured to incentivise cooperation between its various factions. One thing nearly all Libyans can agree on is that the country’s oil should flow freely, since oil revenues pay for everybody’s fuel, medicine and salaries. In recent years, oil production has been repeatedly blockaded by criminal militias and politicians alike; sometimes by the same people engaged in people-trafficking.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Why it’s obvious that morality precedes religion

At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and doubt. You will recognise Matthew 25: 35-40, for its phrasing has entered the idiom: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food … sick and you visited me … in prison and you came to me … a stranger and you took me in … naked and you clothed me … ’ The story is of a king praising his subjects for these kindnesses to him. This puzzles them: ‘When did we see you hungry, and feed you … a stranger and take you in…’ (etc)? The king replies: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.

Monday

Theo Hobson

Can a liberal Catholic now save France?

France is a muddled nation, n’est-ce pas? And at the root of the muddle is, guess what, religion. Maybe the muddle is a godsend. For if the right were more united on religion, Marine Le Pen would surely have won. The Front National is the strongest far-right party in Western Europe, supported by about a third of the French people. But it is also the most muddled. It has a nostalgic idea of the nation as a traditional organic culture. But it seems utterly ignorant of the gaping problem with such a project. Traditional French culture is split between Catholicism and secularism. Marine Le Pen emphasised secularism, in order to project a clear line against Islam. But this was probably a mistake.