Religion

This election was won two days before it was announced, on Easter Sunday. Theresa May put out an Easter message in which she suggested that British values had a Christian basis. It was her version of David Cameron’s message two years before, in which he said that Britain is a Christian country. She was rather more convincing. I don’t know whether Cameron is sincerely religious, but he didn’t seem it. He didn’t even seem to try very hard to seem it, as if fearing that his metropolitan support might weaken, and perhaps that George Osborne would make a snarky jibe about it at cabinet. But it still did him good

Journalists have hunted down Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, about Christian views of homosexuality. Originally, they asked him the wrong question, doctrinally, by inquiring whether he thought ‘homosexuality’ was a sin. This was an easy one for him to repudiate, since an involuntary disposition is not a sin. I forbore to point this out, since I didn’t want to make their persecution of poor Mr Farron any easier, but by the beginning of this week, they had realised their mistake and began pressing him to state whether gay sex was a sin. (The Times covered this with the surprising headline: ‘Farron shrugs off gay sex row to target veteran’s

Allies of Pope Francis are saying that he’s planning to follow the example of Benedict XVI and retire. But he’ll only do so once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals to make sure that the next conclave doesn’t elected a conservative who will interpret Catholic doctrine more strictly than he does. This, at least, is what allies of the Pope have been telling colleagues – claiming that they’ve heard it from the pontiff himself. (Francis himself is a notorious chatterbox and so are some of the cardinals close to him.) The Pope, now 80, apparently wants to hold three more consistories at which he will bestow the red hat on bishops who share his vision

The news on Tuesday that French security services have prevented another attack by Islamic extremists should come as no surprise given the proximity of the election. Nor should the fact that according to police sources the intended target was François Fillon. When police raided the apartments in Marseille of the two suspects, they reportedly discovered a submachine gun, two handguns, three kilograms of TATP explosives, which was used in the 2015 suicide attacks in Paris, and a newspaper photograph of Fillon. The Islamists loathe the conservative candidate, more than they do Marine Le Pen, despite the fact that she leads the National Front, a long-time foe of conservative Islam. When

Theresa May does a decent job of saying that Christianity is at the heart of our shared values. It’s a difficult thing to say without sounding disparaging of non-Christians, but I think it’s something worth saying. Some will say that the Prime Minister should stick to politics, especially when there’s so much politics to do, and stay away from religion. If she wants to give us a headmistressy pep-talk, fine, but keep it strictly secular. I don’t agree. It’s for each prime minister to decide whether to veer into religious territory. (There’s no constitutional bar to him or her getting all happy-clappy – not a danger with this glumly cautious