Month: September 2019

By Graham Harter I was interested recently to see that historian Tom Holland, in his new book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, refers to the change in the meaning of the word ‘saint’ down the centuries of Christianity. Anybody who has read the New Testament will be aware that, there, the term ‘saints’

Grace Dalton reflects on the second episode in the series on Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity. “Eighty years ago, my mother was a little girl…. One day she was out walking with my grandfather, devout,… Anglican;… [he] made it quite clear that he would be highly displeased if she even went inside a Roman

I know that Boris Johnson is widely disliked, but surely calling even him ‘the devil’ is a bit harsh! Nevertheless that’s what happened yesterday (18 September) in the UK Supreme Court. According to The Times, Aidan O’Neill QC, arguing the case that the current prorogation of Parliament is unlawful, told the Court, “What we have

There is a recurrent charge that the mediaeval (Catholic) Church taught that the Earth is flat. It frequently does the rounds whenever people wish to point out the antediluvian nature of some other group’s beliefs — whether that be Christians, Republicans in the U.S., or whoever. But did the mediaeval Church actually teach that the

In a comment piece in today’s Times (10 September), Melanie Phillips says what those of us with eyes to see it have known for some time: that secularism, with its blinding promises of ‘tolerance’ and ‘freedom’, is actually fuelling a culture of anger, hatred and intolerance throughout Western society. Ms. Phillips argues — in my

What is the ‘literal’ interpretation of Genesis 1—3, the chapters detailing the creation of the world and the fall of man? Happily this is a question which the great theologian Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354—430) answers in his twelve-volume work ‘On the Literal Meaning of Genesis’ (Latin De Genesi ad Litteram), completed in the year