Theo Hobson is the author of seven books, including God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values
I wasn’t intending to write about Lily Phillips again. Her story would ideally be ignored. But if it does appear in the media, we must be vigilant about how it is represented, especially if the BBC is doing the representing. On some issues, neutrality is a bogus aspiration. It means allowing a very dubious narrative
My daughter has asked for my advice about what to study at university. Yeah right. She’d rather eat her own hoodie. But I’m going to give it anyway. She is wavering between history and English. Do both, I say. But not many universities offer a joint honours degree, and her (otherwise excellent) teachers seem to
Many Brits who were raised as Christians have abandoned their faith, according to a report by the Pew Research Centre. The survey found that 38 per cent of those brought up as Christians are ‘religiously unaffiliated’, while 4 per cent had converted to other religions. The verdict on religion seems gloomy. But I have a
I recently offered my services as a part-time RE teacher to my local comp, an inner-city affair with a Muslim majority. Yes please, said the nice headmistress: the Covid-blunted Year 11s needed all the help they could get with GCSE revision. The syllabus consisted of Christianity and Islam. What could go wrong? The first thing
Do kids still have hobbies? Maybe hobbies isn’t quite the right word. What I mean is a passionate interest in something fairly adult, something more than playing with toys. For example, a child might get precociously into theatre or birdwatching or medieval history and have a first taste of adult enthusiasm for something. I was
46 min listen
This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always
This is the article I have thought about writing for years, but I have always ended up asking what would be the point. And how annoying that some people would call it ‘brave’, meaning shameful. I’ve always earned a lot less money than my wife. There, I’ve said it. Is that still a big deal
Jordan Peterson is a cross between a student who has lately discovered the meaning of life, and a professor who has known it all along. In an interview in this week’s Spectator, the former persona is sandwiched between two slices of the latter. First he holds forth about the Bible in a ponderous way, in
I was planning to give my mother-in-law the new biography of Ronald Blythe this Christmas. Then I read a review and had second thoughts. I was aware the late chronicler of rural parish life had a bohemian side, but it seems that it was more extensive than I had guessed. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, Patrick
Parish churches are in trouble: about fifty churches close every year, according to a report from Civitas. The review, published last month, strongly echoes the case of the Save the Parish campaign: the Church of England’s leadership has failed to support local parishes, diverting funding to more modern-sounding initiatives. About twenty years ago some bright
There are many grey areas in this safeguarding saga. So it is nice when some black and white emerges. It is surely impossible for anyone to doubt the culpability of George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who resigned his priestly orders yesterday. First, the grey areas. It is difficult to say whether a bishop
A young woman called Lily Phillips, known to certain users of the internet, has recently spoken about a cunning stunt she performed earlier this year. She had sex with 101 men in a single day. As I see it, there are three possible responses to this story. Or maybe four (phwoar!). The first is to
Eating porridge with my daughter this morning (me brown sugar; her honey) I was telling her about Ready Brek, and the boy in the advert going to school surrounded by a warm glow. She shushed me: they were talking about porridge on the radio! In fact they were talking about a successor to Ready Brek
In my first few teenage years I attended Christian holiday camps rather like the ‘Bash’ camps where John Smyth and Justin Welby prayed in the same dormitory. They were run by old boys from the school. It was a day-school, but obviously these camps had a boarding school feel. I loved it. It was like
33 min listen
Since the election of an overwhelmingly secular Labour government, people who describe themselves as humanists have a spring in their step: for example, there’s a prospect that humanist weddings will be legally recognised in England and Wales (they already are in Scotland). But what exactly is a humanist? Definitions vary and there’s a heated debate
It’s hard to know what to say about Donald Trump. Well, maybe it’s easy enough if you’re a fan, or if you are an opponent who’s very sure that the liberal case just needs to be reiterated more forcefully. But for the rest of us it’s difficult. It’s a special sort of difficulty, a difficulty
My reaction to fireworks is a bit eccentric. Lovely, I think, but can’t they be more meaningful? To be more precise, this is my view of Bonfire Night, formerly known as Guy Fawkes night. It would be nice, I think, if we could revive the annual event as a celebration of our shared values. To
Last week, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury since 2013, started leading the Church of England. He got off the fence on homosexuality and backed a major change to the Church’s teaching. He said that that ‘all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship, whether it’s straight or gay’. This obviously goes against the Church’s
Forget Nixon in China. That phrase needs renaming: Welby on sexuality. For it is now at last clear that he has shifted his position on homosexuality. Talking to The Rest is Politics podcast this week, he finally came out with it. He is not, as we all assumed, a conservative in the awkward position of presiding
Some sociology academics have, after a three-year research project called ‘Exploring Atheism’, unveiled a startling discovery: there are a lot of people in Britain who don’t believe in God. I know, it’s quite a gut-punch. They do not quite claim to have found that most Britons are atheists. But they do claim that there are
