What did Jesus mean when he said the poor are always with us? I ask myself this question once again – I often have asked it – because of conversations heard on the news last week. Was Jesus saying poverty is part of the fabric of life and as inevitable as the earth rotating around… Read more

This picture is by my old school friend Antonia Doggett, an artist now based in Portland, in the US. It shows the figure of Jesus with a sheep following close by. Jesus is walking through a landscape, in this case Gaza, but which could be any ‘valley of the shadow of death’ gutted by bombs.… Read more

Why do I defend Islam? I am on Twitter and often get called a heretic and such like for defending Islam against the ridiculous and bigoted onslaught Muslims face on the site. To think, the lovely Elon has used all that money and spent it on normalising irrational hatreds and debasing truth. That hatred is… Read more

This will be an obvious statement to some, and utterly outrageous to others. But here goes – I believe all religions are equal. In a time of resurgent antisemitism and now Islamophobia too, this needs to be considered again and again. What is the relationship of Christianity to other faiths? What is the paradox of… Read more

Where is God when it hurts? Where is God in Gaza? In Iran? The Sudan? Where is God when children suffer and die? Where was God when millions were persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust? Where is God now when women and men suffer abuse in what should be the safest of places – their… Read more