Bijan Omrani's new book, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, is published by Forum Press
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Secularists are cock-a-hoop at the news that the “Quiet Revival” in British Christianity may just be a thing of nought. On Thursday, YouGov announced that a survey they had conduced last year which had found a striking increase in Christian observance, particularly amongst the young, had been flawed. Controls to filter out fraudulent responses had
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The National Curriculum Review, published earlier this month, was a rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the purpose and outcomes of British education. It is an opportunity that has been missed. In some ways, the review has a laudable conservative tenor. It is, for the most part, grounded in practical evidence rather than
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There was confusion in Canterbury Cathedral this week as the Dean and Chapter gave permission for this most venerable shrine of world Christendom to be redecorated in the manner of the M4 Chiswick flyover. Photographs appeared of the cathedral’s ancient walls and columns irregularly plastered in jagged and bulbous graffiti, picked out in the sort
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Finally, some good news from Oxford. The university has recently been through a gloomy patch. It slipped from the top three in UK rankings for the first time since records began. The Oxford Union president-elect, George Abaraonye, also shamed the institution by gloating over the murder of Charlie Kirk. However, the university’s classicists are bringing
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Owen Matthews says that Venice’s residents never stop complaining (1:11); Bijan Omrani reads his church notebook (7:33); Andrew Hankinson reviews Tiffany Jenkins’s Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life (13:54); as 28 Years Later is released, Laurie Penny explains the politics behind Alex Garland’s film franchise
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‘But will anyone be interested?’ the vicar asked cautiously. It was a fair response to my latest madcap scheme. One of the vicar’s 12 churches, St Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset, hosts one of the country’s only three remaining pre-Reformation saints’ shrines with the relics of the saint still present. In
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Bijan Omrani joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England. They discuss the spiritual and cultural debt the country owes to Christianity. The central question of Bijan’s book is ‘does it matter that Christianity is dying in England?’. The faith has historically played a disproportionate role
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Christian culture is under fresh attack. Those striving to preserve old Christian institutions, to maintain the Bible and Church traditions as a common cultural reference point, or to use scriptural ideas to influence society’s laws and ethics, regardless of whether society still possesses an underlying faith, are facing censure. This new assault has not come
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Easter is, of course, the time of year when Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but don’t expect to learn that on the English Heritage children’s Easter trail. ‘Did you know Easter started as a celebration of spring?,’ children who take part in the trail are told. Any mention of Christ or
