Experimenting with Religion: the New Science of Belief by Jonathan Jong. Oxford University Press (Oxford 2023). Hbk. 159 pages. Why do people believe in gods, souls and rituals? The answers are trivial to some: either god has revealed it, or, this nonsense gets taught...
The Covid Pandemic and the World's Religions: Challenges and Responses by George D Chrysides and Dan Cohn–Sherbok (editors). Bloomsbury Academic (London, 2023). 256 pages. £16.99. I have learned much from this book – much that I ought to have learned long ago. It will...
Reconfiguring. A Collection of Post-Christian Thoughts and Theologies by Maria Francesca French. Quoir (USA, 2023). 229 pages. £15.65. This book of writings follows on from the author's previous best-selling study of radical theology, Safer than the Known Way. The...
(Un)certain by Olivia Jackson. SCM Press (Norwich 2023). 256 pages. £19.99. 'Uncertain' is a collection of explanations from ex-believers for their loss of faith. Each individual deconstruction of faith is taken from a survey designed to reveal the various triggers...
How to begin what may be a one-off, or may be the first of a series of such articles? Where am I coming from, and what's this all about? Whilst my previous writings in Sofia establish some activist/Green Party credentials(*) I do not want this piece or its possible...
In the same way as 9/11 has become a 21st century memorable date for the West – and to many areas beyond it, and 7/7 has become another, especially for Londoners, 7/10/23 in our British calendar will be a date that not only the Israeli nation but the Jewish diaspora...
Download full issue PDF Contents Editorial Utopia, Dinah Livingstone Articles Utopian Visions, David Boulton Nicaragua's Failed Utopia, Francis McDonagh Christmas, Tony Windross Who is Human? A Short History of Race, Dominic Kirkham Arthur Shearly Cripps, Digby...
One fine day back in 1999 the future editor of Sofia and the editor of its predecessor, Sea of Faith Magazine, were among several hundred utopians marching to St George's Hill, 'an affluent satellite of London, a wealthy community of stockbrokers studded with gated...
Many aspects of the society created by the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua qualify it to be described as a utopia. Perhaps most notable is the literacy campaign launched less than a year after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. It is estimated that the...
It all began one Christmas – well actually, a few months earlier. A few months earlier I'd found a battered copy of HJ ('Bert') Richards' The First Christmas in my local second-hand bookshop, and as the festive season had almost arrived, it seemed an appropriate thing...