"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language", wrote George Orwell in Politics and the English Language. "It becomes ugly and inaccurate...

There is a growing amount known about the role of religion in the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Or, at least, this has been a privileged area in the thin research available on religion and health. But the framing, in the mass media and contemporary debates, of religious interventions in prevention...

What would happen if the different faiths began automatically adding 'humanism' to their names, Islamic humanism, Buddhist, Judaic, Hindu, Christian humanism, for example - then explored what each meant. We'd probably end up with a rich dialogue based on a celebration of two great realities: our shared humanity and the...

Tea and biscuits are not always the setting for interfaith encounters. It was 9pm on Burns Night and not only Scots were off the street. The wind down the Mile End Road could have been used to train Arctic explorers. Stepney Green underground station in the east end of London...

"We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!"

Tolkien's Gollum would have been a prime target for a religious terrorist recruiter. He is obsessed by the loss of a sacred treasure that defines...

Take a few headline statistics from last week's national census: numbers of people in Britain identifying as Christian, dropping fast, numbers professing no religion, growing, numbers in Britain born outside the country, growing fast. It is not difficult to see what the second paragraph is likely to be following these...

On the one side, there is the constant refrain that the real cause of a particular conflict is not religion. When people are burning down each other's mosques, temples and churches, this can sound implausible. On the other is the impression, reinforced by the mass media, that religion is today's...

"Without doubt the constructive working and mutual understanding between faiths in this country is one of our greatest strengths. Educating children about different faiths is of immense importance in leading children to understand the history that has helped shape the values and traditions of this country, and of other countries...

Shortly after being elected in 1959, Pope John XXIII told his private secretary about his idea to hold an ecumenical Council of the entire Church. Unforeseen consequences, dangerous, a bad idea, was the predicable response. Pope John rebuked him; did he not know that he went forward in faith? Three...

Today is United Nations Older Person's Day. 'The family', a receptacle for both motherhood and apple pie, is a term that prospers from vagueness. It invariably gets a good press from religious leaders and politicians - a less good one from psychiatrists and anthropologists. Only the latter two...

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) lies at the intersection of hopes, expectations and much denigration. Most of it is unrealistic or unfair. The creation of the UN was not an idealistic innovation - though it represented ideals and aspects that were new - but an historically...

The tragedy is that the equivalent of a tiny corner shop, or a small business working from home, can today retail religious hatred to a global market. There will be no shortage of entrepreneurs who will advertise the product, manipulate the market to their advantage. Omar al-Bakri sent out six...

"Proselytism, contraception, gender, abortion, homosexuality". Go to most of the great multi-lateral agencies, the people with the money, to discuss faith communities' role in global health, and this probably forms the main conversation. Perhaps as the door is shutting, the World Health Organisation's estimate that throughout sub-Saharan Africa an average...

The British Bank Holiday is a notoriously slow news day. Unless an untoward sighting of a royal backside occurs, hapless journalists are tied to their telephones in half empty offices hoping for a story to emerge. If the sun is shining and their spouses are burying their children in sand...

The headline 'Mo-mentous' summed up the tabloid press verdict on the Olympics. The wide-eyed, victorious face of Muhammad 'Mo' Farah, a British Somali track athlete, was the defining picture, a stake through the heart of the anti-immigrant, racist politics of the extreme Right in Europe. Dracula will doubtless drag himself...