Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has said that those close to the Bush administration in the USA who want military action against Syria and Iran are guilty of “criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly”. He urged peaceful stabilisation in Iraq.

These days, it can so easily feel as if religion is an anti-democratic force in our polity, writes Giles Fraser. No one votes for Bishops in the House of Lords, for example. So it's worth remembering that in this country, as indeed in many others too, religion was the nursemaid of democracy.

Church of England bishops in the House of Lords have joined other penal reformers in highlighting the conditions of Britain’s child prisons in a debate following the coroner’s report into the death of a 15-year-old boy.

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