Library

A photograph from Cliff Polubinsky’s Habitat for Humanity work in Guatemala — a father teaching his son to lay masonry — offered for quiet contemplation on the theme of love in this world.

Ross McCrory reviews Living (2022), Oliver Hermanus and Kazuo Ishiguro’s retelling of Ikiru, as a study in learning — almost too late — to live and love in and for this world.

Dave Francis on the Sea of Faith Network’s RE education work — from the founding of Solarity to the Big Ideas for RE programme — against a backdrop of the rise of the religious “nones”.

Edward Nickell reviews Lamorna Ash’s Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever, a year-long journey through young Christian conversion that ends, unexpectedly, in faith.

Ben Wood, Quaker theologian and Hedge Druid, talks about faith seeking understanding, dual religious belonging, and a “liberal socialist” politics of grace.

Andy Kemp reviews Clare Carlisle’s Transcendence for Beginners, a philosophical life-writing that finds transcendence not beyond the world but in ordinary, devoted love.

Andrew Edgar reviews Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine — a compelling critique of technological modernity that is, at times, too conservative in the stories it reaches for instead.

Robert Boucnick reviews Nicholas Spencer’s Magisteria, a comprehensive history that dismantles the myth of perpetual war between science and religion.

Martin Spence reports from an Oxford conference on “religious humanisms” — and finds himself persuaded that humanism might, after all, come in the plural.

Sofia’s editors recommend recent publications in biblical studies, hermeneutics, religion and the environment, philosophy, and Islamic studies.

Paul Overend compares three influential twentieth-century accounts of love — Nygren’s agape and eros, Lewis’s four loves, and Fromm’s art of loving — and argues Fromm speaks best to our situation today.

Marking the 800th anniversary of St Francis’s death, Edward Owen TSSF reflects on what it means to live the Franciscan vows of prayer, study and work today.

Dave Francis and Denise Cush examine the opportunities offered by the 2025 Curriculum and Assessment Review, and consider the advantages and disadvantages of including RE in the National Curriculum.

Žižek’s reading of Bartleby’s ‘I prefer not to’

Digby Hartridge reviews Ian Scoones’s argument that marginal communities in the Global South may be better placed than ‘sophisticated’ Western societies to cope with major disruptions.

Christiane van Duuren writes of her stay at the Tent of Nations, a Palestinian farm on the West Bank, and the tenacious hope of the Nassar family who own it.

Some recommendations of recent publications from the editors.

Katy Jennison, a Pagan and Sea of Faith member, talks about her Wiccan practice, the significance of her full moon ritual, and how she understands deity in a non-literal way.