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Is God out of fashion? Far from it
đș BBC blunders | đ Sweet cicely | đȘ Space voyagers
Zeitgeist
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Stormzy: a church-going Christian. Xavi Torrent/WireImage/Getty
Is God out of fashion? Far from it
If I were a believer, says James Marriott in The Times, the baptism of Russell Brand in the Thames this week might lead me to question âif not the Almightyâs existence, then at least His good judgementâ. But itâs part of a discernible cultural trend: âGod is in fashion.â Joe Rogan â âprobably the most popular broadcaster in the anglophone worldâ â recently declared on his podcast that âwe need Jesusâ. Jordan Petersonâs forthcoming book is titled We Who Wrestle With God. Viral misogynist Andrew Tate is a recent convert to Islam; Ben Shapiro, âAmericaâs most popular conservativeâ, speaks vehemently about his Jewish faith.
Each of these men commands an audience in the tens of millions, and their influence is a clue that our culture is âless straightforwardly secularâ than we commonly assume. The rapper Stormzy is a church-going Christian. So are the England footballers Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling. Liberal commentators â blinkered by the assumption that the advance of secularism is a historical inevitability â miss that the future is likely to be âmore religious than we suspectâ. Religious couples have far more babies than atheists: Islam is growing at twice the rate of the global population. And how secular are those who claim to be of âno religionâ yet devote themselves to astrology or tarot reading? We may look back on the high point of secularism as a phenomenon âpeculiar to an age that hubristically believed itself to be at âthe end of historyââ.
âȘïžđ Just look at Kate Forbes, says Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. Until recently, politicians were well advised to steer clear of any God-talk. But three years ago the SNP wunderkind tried a different tack. âTo be straight, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ,â she told an astonished Nick Robinson. âI believe that he died for me, he saved me. And that my calling is to serve and to love him and to serve and love my neighbours with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.â Many politicians think this, but none would dream of saying so in public. Talking about religion can only âalienate and damage your prospectsâ, itâs argued: âfaith needs to be kept as a dirty secretâ. But Forbes has ended up attracting âmore admiration than condemnationâ. That old Alastair Campbell line â âwe donât do Godâ â now looks rather âdatedâ.
Nature
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Florilegius/Universal Images Group/Getty
The perennial herb sweet cicely is a âwelcome harbinger of springâ, says The Oldie. It has a strong aniseed scent and the flavour of the leaves has been likened to fennel or star anise. It can be a âuseful and healthy substitute for sugarâ, reducing acidity in tart fruit like unripe gooseberries, currants and rhubarb. John Parkinson, botanist and apothecary to James I, was a big fan, saying it âgives a better taste to any other herb put with itâ. Another Jacobean herbalist, John Gerard, ârecommended it for oldiesâ, as it ârejoiceth and comforteth the heartâ and âincreaseth their lust and strengthâ.
From the archives
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Power cuts and a racial slur: BBC2âs farcical launch night
BBC2 first came on air 60 years ago last month, says Jonn Elledge on Substack, and launch night âdid not go wellâ. At 6.55pm, 25 minutes before the start of scheduled programming, London was hit by a massive electrical failure that knocked out Television Centre in White City. Broadcasting from back-up facilities at Alexandra Palace, and with their planned lineup unavailable, executives decided the best thing to do was just âread the news over and over againâ. Unfortunately they couldnât get the sound working in time, so the first three minutes of BBC2âs existence consisted of former foreign correspondent Gerald Priestland reading mutely into the camera. When the sound did finally come on, it was midway through a story about a racist bus conductor â so one of the first words ever heard on the channel was a racial slur.
Things didnât get much better from there. At one point the phone on Priestlandâs desk rang, but when he picked it up â expecting there to be a viewer calling in â there was no one at the other end. There was a very awkward moment when the anchor learned, a full seven minutes into the show, that he had been completely inaudible for the start of it. After 15 minutes, someone sensibly pulled the plug. The broadcast cut to some light music, with the caption âBBC2 will start shortlyâ. Then that was replaced by a screeching noise and the words âmajor power failureâ. Watch the whole clip here.
Comment
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Pro-Palestinian protests in Washington DC. Ali Khaligh/Middle East Images/Getty
What hypocrites many modern writers are
PEN America, an organisation set up âto defend freedom of speech and to protect writers from political oppression and persecutionâ, has cancelled its World Voices literary festival in New York and LA, says Lionel Shriver in UnHerd. This after it also cancelled its 2024 awards ceremony â in both cases, a critical number of writers had dropped out over PENâs âfailure to publicly denounce Israelâs âgenocideâ in Gazaâ. But PEN has no business taking a position on this issue. It is, by its nature, âa big tentâ, which includes not only Muslim writers but also Jewish ones. Its duty is to defend free speech of every sort, âincluding the overtly Zionist kindâ.
Yet via the hypocrisy of many of its members, it has succumbed to the âhyper-politicisationâ that has infected organisations âfrom the National Trust to the NHS, from Anheuser-Busch to the Chicago Art Museumâ. The PEN example is particularly egregious, and hilarious: the permissive ethos of the Anglo-Left is âdiametrically at oddsâ with the âdespotic Islamic theologyâ it has decided to embrace. Writers have failed on this front just like everyone else. âAlthough our occupation is more at risk from censorship than most, weâre all too capable of perversely embracing suppressive viewpoints that violate our own interest.â Weâre paid ânot only to write but to think, yet we donât thinkâ â we listen âfor whatever tune is playing in our fellow travellersâ AirPodsâ, then whistle along.
đ€ To see what the critics say about Lionel Shriverâs new book, Mania, click here
Life
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An artistâs impression of Voyager 1 in interstellar space. NASA/JPL-Caltech
âA memento of a vanished civilisationâ
The Voyager spacecraft mission never ceases to amaze, says Anjana Ahuja in the FT. The two probes were launched a few days apart in 1977, the year âJimmy Carter entered the White House, PelĂ© hung up his football boots and I queued with my brother at the cinema to watch the original Star Warsâ. The date was timed to take advantage of a ârare planetary alignmentâ â happening just once every 175 years â that provided some âgravitational kicksâ on the journey. Today, Voyager 1 is some 15 billion miles from Earth, by far and away âthe most distant man-made objectâ. Sending and receiving signals to it, as engineers did recently to fix a communications error, takes more than 22 hours each way.
For those of us of a certain age, the missionâs landmarks have mirrored our own. Voyager 1 reached Saturn as I began secondary school; Voyager 2 arrived at Uranus as I left school, and approached Neptune as I âdanced at university ballsâ. The first probe, in particular, feels like a kindred spirit: âsent off alone into the wilderness; writing home; reaching milestones; and now weakening as it glides into the void between starsâ. One day, in a few billion years, the sun will run out of fuel, and whatever is left of life on Earth will die out. But assuming they can survive the interstellar dust, the Voyager probes will still be out there somewhere, the analogue technology on board âa memento of a vanished civilisationâ.
Quoted
âAny writer worth his salt writes to please himself.â
Harper Lee