Advent. ‘Tis the season of consumption and frantic socialising where, in a tacit acknowledgement that everyone is overloaded, mention of any unrelated project is prefaced with ‘after Christmas, obviously …’ Traditionally, of course, Advent – from the Latin for ‘a coming’ or ‘arrival’ – derives from a religious season marking precisely the opposite: a time […]
The following is an extract from The Secret Life of God On the Sunday closest to the eleventh of November, I set off to see how the Newington Unitarians mark Remembrance Day. This year, the day has acquired an added poignancy, with record poppy sales attributed to a rise in support for the soldiers returning […]
The autumn equinox – one of two days in the year when day and night are of equal length and which, in the pagan tradition, marks the beginning of the dark half of the year, comes as Christian churches celebrate the gathering in of the crops with the Harvest Festival. This year, for me, it’s […]
So Mother Teresa has finally become a saint. In the matter of Mother Teresa as an exemplar of whether religion is Good or Bad, I’m neither for nor against, and certainly wouldn’t go along with Christopher Hitchens’ condemnation of her as ‘a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud’. It’s a view which, as part of […]
There he lived with only a deer for company – according to some legends, the hind provided the under-nourished hermit with milk – until one day he was wounded by a stray arrow from a royal hunting party. Refusing all worldly inducements, he went on to found a forest monastery under the Rule of St […]
ay-pilgrimage/pilgrim-numbers/” target=”_blank”>Camino de Santiago which is now drawing an average of a quarter of a million pilgrims a year. Like the stewards of the Camino, who are argue that pilgrimage is for those of ‘all faiths and none’, BPT founders Guy Hayward and Will Parsons advocate a ‘bring your own beliefs’ approach. I was curious […]
Not a lot of people know this in secular Britain, but July 11th is the Feast Day of St Benedict, the father of western monasticism. Born around 480 in the Italian province of Nursia, as a young man Benedict spent three years as a hermit before being headhunted to become abbot of one of the […]
In the years since 9/11 and 7/7, Britain’s Muslims have tended to be categorised into one or other groups – either as dangerous religious extremists or ordinary British citizens much like the predominantly secular population. But when I went undercover to explore the world of the British Sufis, I found a way of living and […]
This year’s summer solstice is a special one. First and famously, as it’s all over the media, this year’s longest day coincides with a full moon. This is rare: it last happened in 1967, and won’t happen again until 2062, by which time I’ll almost certainly be stardust. I like that there’s a growing custom, […]
The latest row involving Richard Dawkins has set me wondering about the ethics of prayer. In case you missed this particular storm in a theological teacup, Richard Dawkins had a stroke. The Church of England prayed for his recovery. In the ensuing Twitterstorm, someone suggested that – given Dawkins’ famed atheism – the CoE was […]