A lesbian couple marked the first same-sex church wedding in England last week, a milestone which helps illuminate some of the debate ongoing among Protestants over the issue of same-sex marriage.

Modernity poses a not-unhealthy challenge to all religions to reflect on their core convictions. What is Christianity all about?

I am facing an intimidating pile of urgent writing commitments. Rather than squeeze in hastily written posts (with unavoidably thin content), I have decided to put in a pause on my blog. I will resume posting my usual pearls of wisdom at some point next month (April).I wish my readers a happy beginning of spring. Au revoir!

An anti-gay marriage protest movement in France claims it is neither of the Right or of the Left, and refreshingly concerns itself primarily not with the rights of adults, but with the rights of children.

Saying that religious freedom is important because it leads to economic prosperity may strike some as unnecessarily amoral. But we should not be overly disturbed by narrow interests bringing about morally desirable consequences.

The relation between modernity and faith is often perceived and presented as an epic struggle. But it’s actually not that difficult to be a modern person and hold on to one’s faith.

Let us hope that Pope Francis is helping to formulate an open-minded, non-ideological approach to the institutions best suited to combat poverty under a decent regime of human rights.

More Christians today live in the Global South—Asia, Africa, Latin America—than in the old Christian homelands of Europe and North America. This inevitably means further “Pentecostal drift”.

After an unexpected fall, a tentative return to regular blogging.

Viewing religion in an unbroken continuum with every variant of magic is a perspective grounded in a widely diffused class of people—part of the culture of an international intelligentsia.