In an era where a basic understanding of what Christianity is about cannot be taken for granted, Simon Barrow welcomes a new book by philosopher and theologian Keith Ward which clears some ground and opens up issues.

Religiously constructed rows over sorcery, metaphor and meaning in Harry Potter are hardly new, as Simon Barrow has personal reason to know. He suggests we all chill out and finding meaning not menace in the narrative.

An easy assumption that religion is less dangerous when it is 'less religious' is wrong, says Simon Barrow. As an article in the International Herald Tribune points out, the path from death to life is found within as well as beyond each tradition.

Alison Goodlad re-reads George Eliot’s classic ‘Middlemarch’ – and discovers that its provincial narrative has some powerful things to tell us about loving purpose in life, atonement and even Eucharistic living.

What is really at stake in the row between Sony and Manchester Cathedral over a violent video game? Simon Barrow looks at it in terms of Christendom, 'redemptive violence', image as commodity and the onset of the hyperreal.

Simon Barrow suggests that how the churches see their engagement with culture, including spaces like the BBC's Thought for The Day, is shaped by the question about how God has been turned into an artefact under Christendom.

Far from being a crusader, St George of Lydda was a defender of the powerless, says Garth Hewitt. He is a figure for Muslims, Jews, Christians - and for the church in Palestine.

Simon Barrow gives an overview of three scholarly contributions by Kenneth Cragg, perhaps the world's leading interpreter of the relations between the Semitic faiths and their encounters with Western culture.

For years the churches have been unable to fix a common date for Easter. For many it has become a general holiday. Here we provide a guide to the issues, courtesy of the WCC Faith and Order Commission.

Simon Barrow says that beyond the popular scriptural fantasising which feeds much religion on the internet, there are processes of scriptural reasoning which produce a dynamic, fruitful bond between the Bible to lived reality.

The real problem of Islamism as a violent mutation within the Muslim faith is not well addressed by feeding ourselves paranoid fantasies

Maggi Dawn reflects on actors caught up in the Gospel and the church caught up in acting

Jonny Baker talks to Ian Mobsby about his new book on fresh expressions of church and 'post-Christendom Anglicanism'