Author: Francis McDonagh

Describes Richard Acland, Christian socialist baronet, Common Wealth Party founder, Labour MP and CND founder, who gave his estates to the National Trust.

Surveys Catholic and liberation-theology resistance and compliance under Latin American colonialism, dictatorships and conflict, from Las Casas to Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua, ending with Bolsonaro.

Francis McDonagh traces the decline of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution into Ortega’s repressive rule, including the persecution of the Catholic Church and Jesuit university, with exiled writers keeping the dream alive.

Review of Luke Lerner’s edited collection on class in the Church of England: working-class clergy and ordinands, the Iona Community, and the call for churches to organise for social justice.

Reviews Leah Robinson’s Bad Theology, which examines apartheid, Puritan colonists, the Klan and Jonestown as oppressive theology; the reviewer doubts practical theology’s claims and contrasts Desmond Tutu.

Francis McDonagh surveys religion and politics in Latin America from colonial conquest to liberation theology and Pope Francis. He ends with the 2022 Brazilian election and the use of Pentecostal and Catholic support by Bolsonaro.

Francis McDonagh reviews Albert and the Whale by Philip Hoare.

Francis McDonagh analyses the 2020 US presidential election: how Biden won, the limits of the Democratic victory, and how different religious groups voted.

Francis McDonagh reviews The Lost Art of Scripture by Karen Armstrong.

Francis McDonagh reviews In the Closet of the Vatican by Frédéric Martel.