Theo Hobson

It is one of the most important religion stories for a decade or so. The Church of England seems to have changed its mind on church schools. A few days ago, the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend John Pritchard, who is also chairman of the Church’s board of education, said he wanted just 10 percent of places reserved for church attenders. It’s a total turn-around. For a decade the Church has bullishly defended the system, and dismissed dissenters as traitors to the cause. What happened? The C of E has realized that the popularity of its schools is bad for its image. How can this be? The popularity of church schools is due to their success, and why should success be a cause for shame?

The Quilliam foundation has found that 97% of imams working in Britain are foreign-born, and that nearly half of mosques do not make provisions for women. A huge proportion of mosques are led by rabble-rousers, obsessed by Middle Eastern politics rather than the actual day-to-day needs of their community. In short, Muslim religious culture is failing to integrate, to become more British. How can Muslims be encouraged to integrate? The Quilliam foundation suggests that tighter regulation is needed, and more care to fund community projects run by moderates rather than extremists. Hazel Blears argues that the government should be energetically engaged in the debate about what constitutes extremism (I think that’s what she’s saying).

Andrew Motion has confirmed his image as the ultimate middlebrow, wet liberal. He is passionately keen that students should read the Bible, so that they can progress on to the true faith of Eng-Lit. 'I am not for a moment suggesting that everybody be made to go to church during their childhood' he told the Guardian, but he wishes everyone would have a taste of the ritual, the beautiful mystery, like he did. Yuk. 'If people want to get down on their knees and believe it line by line, good luck to them. I often wish I could, but as it happens I can't. But it doesn't destroy my pleasure in reading the Bible or my sense of its importance, at all.' Double yuk. As it happens I am too brave and honest to accept the old myths, with their illiberal God, he is saying.

You'd think Darwin created the world all by himself with a few test-tubes, the amount of attention he's getting. I'm not denying he's a brill biologist, but there's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his theory. And the discussion about science and religion that surrounds him is just bo-oring. No religious believer intelligent enough to get air-time disagrees with evolution (or does Anne Atkins?), so what happens is this. Atheists strongly imply that his theory, which is the best thing in human history, strongly implies atheism. Christians queue up to say how keen they are about the tree-of-life stuff, and to point out that the Bearded One was an agnostic but not an atheist. That's it – again and again.

Commentary on the Carol Thatcher business has been predictably superficial and self-righteous. Its real meaning is that racial correctness can only be understood in relation to religion. Bear with me. Did she commit a serious offence? She referred to someone as a golliwog, obviously knowing that it was a taboo word, capable of causing great offence to black people, and of producing a frisson of disapproval among the white people who were actually present. It was, perhaps, a momentary lapse of judgment, a brief failure of self-censorship - there is no evidence that she holds racist views. For this lapse she has been dropped from a television show, and her reputation has been damaged beyond repair. It sounds like a shocking over-reaction, political correctness gone Stalinist.

While I admire Charles Moore's willingness to inherit the mantle of Mary Whitehouse, I don't think he has quite put his finger on the essence of the Brand-Ross business. The large public outcry provoked by the call to Andrew Sachs can't be channelled into a general war on smut at the BBC. I don't think there's a public appetite to see Ross as the personification of BBC smut, who must never be re-employed by the corporation. Though Ross was involved in the incident, it wasn't really about him. And it isn't quite right to see it as an acute example of a general smut problem. It was really about Russell Brand. Russell Brand is a very unusual comedian. He makes his own life central to his act. He is the Tracey Emin of comedy. And of course it's his sex life that provides the material.

Prince Charles has re-announced his desire to be 'Defender of Faith'- to drop the definite article that ties this title to a particular church (or indeed a particular religion). He first announced this in 1994, in that embarrassing interview with Jonathan Dimbleby. Of course this title is not the only thing that ties the monarchy to the established Church: he would still be 'supreme governor of the Church of England.' (Or maybe he wants to be known as 'the supreme governor of faith'?) Why does this definite article bug him so? Is it because he disapproves of the monarchy's role in the establishment of the Church of England? It seems that he is indeed uneasy about it, or aspects of it.

In an interview with Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian, Rowan Williams has a nice little dig at Dawkins - he's calmly patronising, seemingly by accident. "As he escorts me from his study, he tells me he admires Dawkins. "There's something about his swashbuckling side which is endearing." He invited atheism's high priest and his wife to a Lambeth Palace party last year. "They were absolutely delightful." Again, classic Williams: the better man being nice about his foe…But the real reason the Dawkins were invited is unexpected. "My son wanted to meet Mrs Dawkins." Why? "She was in Doctor Who." Really? "Oh yes. She played an assistant when Tom Baker was the Doctor." " More seriously, Williams' rationale for writing a book about Dostoyevsky is interesting.

On the Moral Maze they were discussing the place of religion in society again. What struck me was that none of the Christian participants was willing to defend the establishment of the Church of England. The Catholic commentator Clifford Longley was for disestablishment, and Rev George Pitcher of the Telegraph supposed that he was too. The Evangelical vicar Steve Chalke didn't quite face the issue, but kept insisting that the churches must reject any form of privilege in order to serve society.  It was left to Melanie Phillips and Michael Portillo to suggest that the established church might be a good thing.