Category Archives: Theology

Swinging shepherd blues

I thought I ought to read Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur before I die. Not only is it one of those “monuments to English prose,” but to be honest I wanted some temporary escapism from the present evil age. The edition I got from Amazon, for a mere 15 quid or so, gives reading pleasure of the old sort in itself – leather bound, gold-edged, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, nice illuminated large-cap chapter starts, with old Gothic script headings, and with a modern scholarly introduction. Handling that old-school volume is as much superior to a Kindle edition as a live church service is to a webcast. It was printed in China, … Continue reading

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Permacrisis management

A comment I noticed on a blog today, after someone suggested that there would be huge political ramifications once the truth of one of the COVID lies emerges: “Most Americans don’t trust the government already – but they still obey it.”

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 5 Comments

Fleeing our democratic values

There is a fascinating long-form discussion on The Duran, surely the best geopolitics channel on YouTube, including a very big fish indeed – Sergey Karaganov. His Wikipedia page shows some signs of anti-Russian bias, and a better idea of him can be gained from the few references in Richard Sakwa’s enlightening work, The Putin Paradox.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

The Great Gloom – a theological perspective

With the hindsight of history – or, perhaps, of eternity – the Great Gloom that was imposed upon the world in 2020, and continues into 2023, is likely to be seen primarily as a failure of political leadership. Most of the world now is led by the kind of “false shepherds” condemned by the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament. In those days the agenda was idolatry and personal gain, and in one way or another the same is probably true now.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 6 Comments

Scales falling – an observational study

I’ve mentioned a few times here how interesting it has been to see, mainly via social media, many leading practitioners of science gradually morphing into conspiracy theorists over the course of the COVID affair. Prospectively it was fascinating to see the gradual unraveling of belief in what we were being told in so many individual cases, culminating not only in disillusionment about the state of science and medicine, but the embracing of suspicions about the dark forces behind it. Retrospectively, it is of huge, but under-recognised, significance that an unprecedented number of the most rigorously evidence-orientated professionals have come to wear tin-foil hats.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Essential workers

It’s taken me a while to figure out what it is that consistently annoys me about such a worthwhile provision as the BBC local TV news. In fact, it took my reaction to King Charles’s first Christmas broadcast to achieve the realisation that I’m not simply a jaded cynic. I am a jaded cynic, but not simply one.

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When is religion not like religion?

There are some news articles and YouTube videos around concerning the discovery of the fabled star catalogue of Hipparchus (c190-c120BC) as a palimpsest in a mediaeval manuscript from the ancient monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, whence also came one of the oldest near-complete manuscripts of the Greek Bible, Codex Sinaiticus.

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Innocent as doves… but wise as serpents

I don’t know if the story about the black charity boss and the lady of the bedchamber at Buckingham Palace has gone round the world to you (if you’re outside the UK). You’ll easily find it if not, and I can’t be bothered to describe it in detail.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Worshipping the god Parsimony

Following on from yesterday’s post, and from the parallel article on “Degrowth” as a national (or international) government policy to which I linked, I’ve been thinking about the ideological logic behind such policies. In essence, they are a hangover from eighteenth century Malthusian beliefs.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Net Zero = Year Zero

The Great Reset project, or whatever the reality behind the slogans is, plans its machinations in secret – kind of. In fact, as I’ve sometimes outlined here, much of it is published openly in books and websites, and yet is carefully kept out of public awareness through distraction and obfuscation. Hiding things in plain sight and calling them “misinformation” is good propaganda, evidently. Even so, one’s focus tends to become sharper over time, as is shown by the very fact that so many ordinary people now have some grasp of a Great Reset and rightly perceive it as a threat, rather than a promise.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment