Theo Hobson is the author of seven books, including God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values
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
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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
Questioning the sincerity of a fellow Christian’s faith is a big no-no. It would be wrong, then, to doubt the sincerity of Russell Brand’s Christianity, just as it would be wrong to pour scorn on the boy who broke out of Sunday school into the main church during the sermon, shouting of his joyful discovery
The evangelicals really are revolting. After a lot of talk of the need to break away from a tainted, liberal, heretical Church, something significant has happened. Last month, two of London’s biggest conservative parishes – All Souls Langham Place and St Helen’s Bishopsgate – held services ‘commissioning’ new leaders. It’s an obvious repudiation of the
I suppose you could say that I’m an ‘amateur’ artist, that art is my ‘hobby’. In fact no, I take that back. I’m no amateur hobbyist dabbler. I’m an artist. I’m a bloody artist. If you take something seriously, the hobby label grates. And I take art seriously. I might not be on track to
The House of Commons has a more secular character than ever before. Roughly 40 per cent of MPs have chosen to swear in using the secular ‘affirmation’ rather than a religious oath. Only 24 per cent took the secular option at the start of the last parliament. The current secular affirmers include half of the
My friend Andy is getting married. It’s about time – he and his girlfriend have a one-year-old daughter. He wants to get married in church, so I introduced him by email to the local vicar. I was copied in to their initial correspondence. The vicar told Andy that the Church of England prohibits sex outside
Future historians of the Church of England might look back at this weekend as the beginning of the end. A selection of bishops and members of the General Synod are meeting at a hotel in Leicester to seek a solution to the impasse over homosexuality. They hope to make a plan to take to July’s Synod: a
Why do faith schools excite such passions? Obviously people care a lot about religion, and education, but there’s something else at work too. Schools are microcultures, bubbles, little versions of society, in which the secularism of our culture can be shut out, defied. It sounds like a strange exaggeration, but if a religion has its
Could Russell Brand, who has just been baptised, become a significant Christian figure? I suppose he could become a sort of British televangelist, God help us. But significant in a good way? It’s not impossible: he’s sharp and charismatic, and taps in to a major English spiritual tradition. But it’s not likely either: our culture needs
It’s thirty years since the first women were ordained as priests of the Church of England. For ten years, there have been women bishops too. Well, at least one aspect of the Church’s reform is done and dusted. Cue hollow laughter from those acquainted with the strange intricacy and agony surrounding this seemingly simple reform.
When the New Atheism thing was new, I wrote a piece saying that the people who supported it were pretentious and cowardly. They pretended to know what religion is, and said that it caused great harm. I said this was ‘intellectual cowardice’. The intellectual coward is one who chooses simplicity over complexity and difficulty. One
When the government raises big questions about our national values, one has a choice: to see it as an opportunity to say something constructive, to deepen the debate. Or one could respond like a cynical intern at the Guardian, saying, in effect: how dare they try to sound all high and mighty? Where’s some holes
When does radical religious conservatism become a dangerous bid for theocracy? It’s a question that some American commentators are pondering, in relation to ‘Christian nationalism’. David French has argued in the New York Times that we should be wary of the term ‘Christian nationalism’, which is often attached to Trump-supporting evangelicals. There is nothing very
Perhaps Justin Welby expected gratitude from Ukraine, after the Church of England’s Synod debated the war this week. He certainly didn’t expect a double rebuke from the country, a sacred and secular censure. In letters to Welby that have not been published but have been shown to me, two official Ukrainian bodies have protested at
