Reading Time: 8 minutes Where I live, Navidad and Semana Santa are significant religious affairs, times when the hustle and bustle of city life eases for a month and a week respectively: to observe Catholic customs, to be with family, or simply to travel to nearby towns and farms. One side effect, though, is the impact of reduced foot […]
religion and politics
Posted inPolitics
The Ukraine-Russia conflict: Let’s talk about Putin’s endgame
Reading Time: 6 minutes Beyond exclamations of shock and horror, what we need to be talking about as Russia invades Ukraine this morning is Putin’s endgame. Putin claims that he is de-Nazifying Ukraine, and that it is not, despite what the West says, a sovereign nation. I listened to one of his spokespeople on the news claim that it […]
Posted inSecularism
Do you taboo? On the silence of nonreligion
Reading Time: 6 minutes I interviewed Barney Frank for Politico in 2013, on why it seemed to be harder to come out as an atheist than as gay. I’m a historian and a poet, not a journalist, but my writing on atheism leads editors to send me on such missions when something newsworthy happens on the theme. This subject […]
Posted inPolitics
Can religion keep quiet about politics?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Religion takes in all manner of personalities and burnishes what it receives. A mean person, adopting religion, becomes meaner. A kind person becomes kinder. And a political person can become loudly political, as is the case with American evangelical politics. Political religion has much to lament. Politics interlaced with religious fervor invented many techniques for […]
Posted inSpirituality & Ritual
Anxiety and fear fuels religion’s enduring power
Reading Time: 5 minutes In my childhood and youth, I was often reminded that Christianity had nothing whatsoever to do with superstition. In the back of my mind, by my teens at least, I went along with the traditions of my Anglican “tribal” community but found difficulty in identifying a borderline between beliefs accepted in my own, or any […]
Posted inGeneral
New York Governor Kathy Hochul to Church: The COVID-19 vaccine is God’s answer to our prayers
Reading Time: 2 minutes While some right-wing Christians have used their massive platforms to spread misinformation and doubt about the COVID-19 vaccine, discouraging people from getting their shots or claiming that mask mandates are somehow a violation of their freedoms, others, like New York Governor Kathy Hochul, have defended vaccines and mask mandates in the name of their faith. […]
Posted inNews
Shielding luminaries from criticism would be a monumental blunder
Reading Time: 3 minutes THERE has been widespread upset about the damage and desecration of memorials in the UK with a recent spate over the summer of 2020. It has long been considered that the law is not sufficiently robust in this area and the government intends strengthening the existing law by introducing the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts […]
Posted inPolitics
Researchers say: Supreme Court is now more “pro-religion” than ever before
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is awful news if you’re not a conservative Christian.
Posted inNews
Op-ed: Oh, how they laughed when Ted Cruz joked about Cancún
Reading Time: 4 minutes A winter storm with below freezing temperatures killed more than a few people in Texas last week. The failure of the state’s electrical grid during the weeklong cold snap left more than four million Texans without electricity and heat, many for days on end in subfreezing temperatures. Many residents also lost access to water, and 14.6 million were ordered […]
Posted inNews
Op-ed: Government & Religion
Reading Time: 5 minutes IN November the UK Government launched an Independent Faith Engagement Review, headed by the Director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, Colin Bloom, above. The review into ‘how best the government should engage with faith groups in England’ concluded on December 11. The consultation prompted Professor John Radford, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of East London, […]