Religion

Christians believe that God speaks to people. But what does God sound like? Learning to recognise the difference between God’s voice and the myriad of other voices in your head takes much patience and practice. But it is possible!

For many Christians, the belief that souls go to Heaven or Hell after death is a cultural legacy rather than a conclusion reached through personal analysis of the biblical text.

There is perhaps no historical figure who is more frequently the topic of debates than the figure of Jesus Christ. Prophet or Conman? Divine or Human? Martyr or Madman?

For me, 2022 was the year of waiting—a word that managed to define our lives, thoughts and actions to an unexpected degree.

Some statistics circulated by the international press have created an increasingly negative image of Christians and Christianity. How well-founded is this image, and how should those targeted by it deal with it?

How should addictions be understood? Addiction is usually regarded as a failure of the will, or as a sickness. Lately, the tendency is for the younger, educated generation to embrace the second answer. The idea that addiction is a failure of the will, a sin, from a Christian perspective, is seen as outdated.

In February 2008, English theologian NT Wright made headlines—at least on the website of Time magazine, among others—with comments associated with the launch of his book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.

The controversial story of Baruch Spinoza takes on a fascinating dimension with the explosive excommunication from the Jewish community decreed by the leaders of the Portuguese Sephardic community in Amsterdam—a decision accompanied by one of the most severe anathemas. This document made Spinoza one of the most reviled philosophers by both Jews and Christians, but attitudes towards him began to change after the...

The Methodist Church emphasised practical sanctification and mission, these aspects being necessary in contemporary Christianity as well.

According to attachment theory, originally formulated by John Bowlby and later refined by Mary Ainsworth, adults’ relational patterns are formed according to the model of the close relationship they formed in early childhood with their primary caregiver, who is usually the mother.

Most of our beliefs are easy to keep, as long as nothing puts them to the test. Like many others, Henry Gerecke discovered to what extent he truly believed in what he had preached for years when faced with a difficult choice.

I was a pagan as a child. Not by choice, but as a consequence of lacking any access to the Word of God. In the 1980s Romania, catechizing an Orthodox child (whose parents were members of the Communist Party) was a highly unlikely event Pavlik Morozov’s myth, the hero-child that denounced his own father, generated caution.

In the famous realist novel A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe blends the factual with the imaginary, describing the social context just before the great plague struck London in 1665. Among the reactions described, two straddle the line between religion and conspiracy.

In talking to pastor Cristian Modan, the religion teacher and chaplain at Mihai Ionescu School in Bucharest, I wanted to find out how we should teach children to communicate with God.

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.