Crimes and Misdemeanors: Woody Allen at the BFI
Last Friday we went to seen Woody Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors in the BFI’s Woody Allen season. There are two more showings to go (including this evening), and I would recommend this...
View ArticleRowan Williams’s legacy
Rowan Williams is stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury. For all his faults he is one the world’s great intellectuals. Can the Church of England sustain its establishment status without him?...
View ArticleWhen is evangelism intolerance? A dilemma for some Christians
I have a great deal of sympathy with the article by Deborah Orr in the weekend’s Guardian: Whether you are religious or secular imposing your views on others is foolish. Ms Orr complains about...
View ArticleFootball: after optimism fails, England fans try low expectations.
I’m not a football fan, in any of its forms. I don’t follow a football (soccer) club. But I do get swept into the excitement of the big international championships that take place every two years:...
View ArticleTwo sides of the Church
It has been a big week in my ongoing spiritual odyssey, as I wrestle with my agnostic contradictions. My anti-Church hackles were raised, all too predictably, by the Church of England’s response to...
View ArticleThey Came to a City: what happened to wartime Utopianism?
Last week we we saw the film of J.B. Priestley’s They Came to a City shown by the BFI as part of their season of Ealing Studios films. As entertainment the film lacked a certain something, but as a...
View ArticleVienna 1900 – parellels with Europe today
Today we went to see the last day of the National Gallery’s exhibition of portraiture from Vienna at the turn of the 19th/20th Century. The art was interesting in its own right, but the...
View ArticlePaul Klee: vision, craft and art
Today we went to see the Tate Modern’s exhibition of Paul Klee. It closes on 9 March. If you haven’t seen it, and you enjoy art, I would urge you to go soon. I was surprised how much it moved me. It...
View ArticleBig ideas divide us. The path to progress lies through small ones.
For me it is the great turning point in modern thought. In the 1930s the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (pictured in a 1947 photo by Ben Richards I picked up off Wikipedia) rejected his early, grand...
View ArticleThinking about God: the work of Oliver Quick
Longstanding readers of this blog will remember that I used to take on aspects of religious faith sometimes, from my agnostic Christian standpoint. I have not attempted this recently as it rather...
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