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.

In the brutality of the crucifixion, the political and religious order that put Jesus to death was laid bare. But the church has sweetened and sanitised its saviour far more than chocolatiers can ever do, says Jonathan Bartley.

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.

Simon Barrow charts the struggle for an elected second chamber, the anomaly of Lords Spiritual, and a lurking theological question

As the bicentenary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade approaches Jonathan Bartley says we are enslaved until Africa is free

Parliamentary rebellion is not quite what it used to be. Many of us recall the colourful heyday of ‘the beast of Bolsover’, Dennis Skinner MP, the backbencher who usurped the best seats, scowling leftist disapproval of Thatcherite policies and Labour fudges. His acerbic wit was a refreshing antidote to the bland reassurances of routine political rhetoric.

It would appear that the most senior figures in the English Catholic and Anglican churches have no real idea just how bad they look to a massive number of people right now. Living in something of an ecclesial cocoon, they express "shock" at the reaction to their determination to discriminate. I refer, of course, to the unseemly row over the Equality Act 2006 (due to be implemented on 6 April 2007) and Catholic adoption agencies.