Outrage at free speech clamp on Pope’s Australia visit

by | Jul 2, 2008

Civil libertarians are infuriated at special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney, Australia, where Pope Benedict XVI will be the guest of honour. Legal experts say that restrictions will effectively make it illegal...

Hearing hope through the babble

by | May 27, 2008

With all its many complexities, the question at the heart of globalization remains alarmingly simple. Not ‘shall we have it or not?’ – there is now no serious choice about that. But what kind of globalization, determined by whom, and to what ends? Will it continue to...

Christ is an unwanted gift for the religious

by | Dec 25, 2007

Romans 1.1-7; Psalm 80.1-8, 18-20; Matthew 1.18 – 25. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place this way… to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which...

Against the gods, religious and otherwise

by | Dec 3, 2007

The occasion was the third annual Jeremy Bentham lecture, named after the eighteenth century philosopher who is a hero of secular rationalists. It was given by Tim Crane, a self-confessed atheist and professor of philosophy at University College London – the place...

Lord Carey backs call for an end to the blasphemy law

by | Nov 25, 2007

Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain’s archaic blasphemy law to be abolished. Lord Carey, who is an...