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

On 25 August the Sunday Times had an article by Rosamund Urwin entitled, “#JesusToo: Christianity is keeping us radical, says historian.” The article was a reflection on the soon-to-be-released new book by Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. According to the article, in his book Holland calls Christianity the “greatest revolutionary movement”

In the modern world we often assume that our ancestors in the Middle Ages were simply gullible about Christianity. But is this really the case? In the first of a series of reflections on Anselm of Canterbury’s ‘Why God Became Man’ (Cur Deus Homo), I will consider this question. Of course, people in Europe didn’t

One of my reading materials during my etimasthe summer break was Peter Pomerantsev’s This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, a book which charts how the very idea of truth has been weaponized by dictators in recent years. Part 5 of this book introduced me to the term ‘Othering.’ ‘Othering’ is the

One of the books I read during my etimasthe summer break was Peter J. Williams’ Can We Trust the Gospels? In it, Dr. Williams puts forward a range of considerations why the four Gospels of the New Testament are not only credible, but should be believed. He explicitly does not claim that the truth of

etimasthe will be taking a break for the next five weeks. We will next be publishing on or around Thursday 15th August. We will still be responding to comments, either on Facebook or left directly on our site. We would like to wish all our readers a very happy summer holiday, whatever you’re doing with