What was God's role in Auschwitz? A question often prohibited, but always asked
Andrew Brown
Andrew Brown: How to believe: Otto Dov Kulka's writing considers how religious belief can exist in a world with no future. His answer comes in the form of a dream
Four Quartets: TS Eliot's struggle to make the real world right in a spiritual realm
Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney: TS Eliot – part 8: These poems are about old age and regret, but also poetic structure and art. After them, there was nothing much left to say
With the Four Quartets, TS Eliot's poetic powers trump his mysticism
Roz Kaveney: TS Eliot – part 7: We may find the spirituality of this great work questionable, but the humanity behind it and his continuing brilliance, is not
TS Eliot's The Waste Land: the radical text of a wounded culture
Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney: TS Eliot – part 3: The poem draws on draws on the Christianity of Eliot's polite and cultivated youth – yet at best offers little consolation
TS Eliot: guilt, desire and rebellion at respectability
Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney: TS Eliot – part 2: Eliot's revolt from duty, and Unitarian virtue and philosophy, can, in part, be blamed on a culture of repression and ignorance
TS Eliot: searching for sainthood amid hate speech and hurt
Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney: TS Eliot – part 1: Some of the 20th century's finest poetry belongs to Eliot, yet any account of it must also keep track of the harm he did
We don't read the Bible to learn more, but to be fed
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 6: If you remember one thing about this series, remember the image of a baby at the breast. George Herbert felt the truth could never be fully reached, yet one could still be enriched by stories
George Herbert's poetry: Christian calling, struggle and self-doubt
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 5: As a member of the clergy, I take great comfort in knowing that even Herbert sometimes agonised about his faith and vocation
Why do we pray? It's all in this George Herbert poem (sorry, there's no mention of parking spaces)
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 4: As I discovered at the moment of my conversion, prayer is not just a way to reach a distant God, but something God does too. It is 'something understood', in both directions
If God is love, then can God also be love, heat and passion?
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 3: George Herbert personifies God as love – a fundamental tenet of the Bible – but then goes further, as the more sexual heat
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 2: Put simply, we can't. Herbert is at his most profoundly theological through his poetry's use of arresting images and scenes
George Herbert: the man who converted me from atheism
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: George Herbert – part 1: The early 17th century clergyman wrote the most fiercely intelligent poetry, grappling with Christian doctrines and our relationship with God
Why Christianity was the wrong civil religion for Rousseau
Theo Hobson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – part 4: The state needs common values that its citizens can agree on, argues Rousseau, but Christianity will not do because there are so many non-believers and its doctrines divide opinion
