Theo Hobson, Author at The Spectator

Saturday

May 10, 2008

‘It’s harder for straights to feel Christian charity than gays’

From our UK edition

Theo Hobson meets Gene Robinson, the only openly gay Anglican bishop, who says that homosexuals are more open to the Christian ‘message of radical change’ I am sitting in St Mary’s church, Putney, home of right-on Anglicanism. Bishop Gene Robinson — the gay American whose election nearly split the Anglican church — is seeking reassurance from his fans. He’s had a grilling from our nasty press, he says, and is relieved to be among friends. I get out my pen and prepare to dip it in poison. I feel deeply ambivalent about Gene — not hostile, but very much in two minds. And I think he may hold the future of the Anglican communion in his hands.

Saturday

August 13, 2005

Theo Hobson

Don’t blame religion

From our UK edition

Theo Hobson says that the suicide bombers are not inspired by a belief in an afterlife so much as by political ideology — like the kamikaze pilots of the second world war Heaven is the problem. That is what the atheists are saying. Religion is dangerous because it hooks us on heaven; it encourages us to prefer another world to this one. Once people are gulled into believing in eternal bliss, they are likely to be impatient for it. Is it any great surprise that some believers lose all respect for this world and its inhabitants, when they have been told that it is a shadowy antechamber to the real deal? This is what Matthew Parris said soon after the London bombings: that the problem lies not with extremist Islam but with any faith that dangles the afterlife before us.

Saturday

April 23, 2005

Theo Hobson

Where Blair has gone wrong

From our UK edition

Frank Field tells Theo Hobson about Christianity, socialism — and the Prime Minister’s failure of leadership I am expecting to meet Edmund Blackadder’s Puritan uncle, who frowns on suggestively shaped turnips, and worries that someone somewhere is having fun. But Frank Field does not fit the description. He’s smiley, forthcoming, chatty. Field is more interesting than most ex-ministers. He embodied New Labour’s early attempt at stern moral idealism and intellectual rigour — the Keith Joseph of the movement. He looks beyond party labels (he is a friend of Lady Thatcher); he writes books about the politics of behaviour and the Kingdom of God (he is a staunch Anglican).