The Social World

Tag: Religion

  • The science of marriage

    “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” With this stern admonition, the Church has long been a fervent defender of marriage. But as religion has faded as a social force, so too has marriage. 

    Does it much matter if people choose to shack up together instead of tying the knot? What is lost if some men want to be incels or some women decide a husband is a bothersome surplus to their needs? The problem is that all lifestyles alternative to marriage serve to undermine it. And like other major social institutions, marriage is not some arbitrary cultural construct like a federal holiday. Rather, it rests on genetically shaped behaviors that evolution has written into the human genome because of their survival value. Suppress or subvert these behaviors and you risk consequences.

    Evolution’s imperatives are deeply laid. Step back just a few beats in evolutionary time, to when early humans were exploring the African savannahs, using their wits to evade stronger predators. The human skull needed to expand, but the mother’s pelvis was a limitation. To pass through it, babies had to be born with their heads still small, which meant prematurely. These helpless infants were more likely to survive if two parents were around, unlike with the other great apes where the mother alone raises the offspring. Evolution supported the human family unit with two clever biological innovations, also unknown among other apes. Female chimpanzees sport visible swellings when they are ready to conceive but ovulation in humans became largely concealed, so a man wanting to ensure his paternity had to stick around until the first signs of pregnancy. And to encourage further association, evolution arranged for women to be sexually receptive all the time, not just at estrus.

    The pair bond between man and woman induces both partners to share in the arduous task of raising children. It’s this set of genetically shaped behaviors that is formalized in the cultural institution of marriage. The nature of the pair bond was somewhat modified with the advent of polygamy in tribal and successor societies, where powerful men were able to accrue many wives. Genghis Khan, the world champion in this pursuit, labored prodigiously in the large harems he assembled throughout the lands he conquered – and some 16 million men today carry his Y chromosome. But polygamy is destabilizing. For some men to have many wives means that many men have none. Large numbers of wifeless young men, with no stake in society, create problems. The usual solution was to march them off to war with neighboring states. But warfare doesn’t always turn out as expected.

    Monogamy first came to prominence in ancient Greece and Rome, and was spread by the Church throughout the Roman empire. So successful was the one man/one woman principle to the formation of stable polities that it eventually became the custom across most of the world. Marriage and monogamy are both stabilizing measures developed by culture in support of the behaviors prescribed by evolution. The human family is the best social structure that evolution could contrive for raising children. What happens when we mess with this structure and the institution of marriage that supports it?

    The answer, not to be overdramatic, is extinction – or at least a road that leads directly there. In almost all countries outside of Africa, fertility is in rapid decline. The total fertility rate in both the US and UK has dropped more than 20 percent since 2010 and last year reached all-time lows of 1.60 children per woman’s lifetime (US) and 1.41 for British women. For a population to sustain itself at constant size, a fertility rate of 2.1 is required.

    Bad things happen to declining populations. A dwindling workforce has to support an ever-heavier burden of retirees. Tax rates rise, hope for the future falls. Defense is imperiled if the army cannot meet its recruitment goals. Once a population slips below a fertility rate of about 1.4 for 20 years or so, it reaches a point of no return: retirees consume the resources young families would need to raise more children. Marriage is the context in which people have children. Some 80 percent of children born in the US and UK are born to married parents. People who cohabit have far fewer children. Children fare best when both a mother and father share in their upbringing. The declining rate of marriage is one of a nexus of factors that have depressed fertility. People are starting families later, or stopping at one child. One reason is the expense of raising children. Another is that women are now better educated than men and can easily find jobs, often choosing careers over childcare.

    In World War One, women handed out white feathers on the street to men presumed too cowardly to risk their lives on the front line. Should men now be distributing white feathers to women who decline to bear children, a social duty just as crucial for society’s survival as is military service? Well, no. Women cannot ethically be dragooned into bearing more children than they want. But the obvious incentives just don’t seem to work. South Korea has put in place every pro-natalist policy you can think of, from direct cash payments to housing subsidies and government-funded matchmaking. Its fertility rate hit 0.72 in 2023 and is projected to fall as low as 0.65 this year. Last year, 150 schools in South Korea reported that they had no new first-year children. Unless childbearing is somehow made a more welcome choice for women, and marriage comes back into popularity, each future generation will be smaller than its predecessor.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • How scientists misled the world about faith

    How scientists misled the world about faith

    Sometime in 1953, Dorothy Martin was contacted by aliens. They had bad news and they had good news. The bad: Earth was about to be swallowed up by floodwaters. The good: as the leader of a chosen few, Martin would be saved by flying saucers. Mankind had brought this calamity on itself by following Lucifer’s agents – scientists – and abandoning Christ. Over the next year or so, Martin assembled a little flock of disciples who believed their salvation, and the world’s end, would come on December 21, 1954.

    A team of psychologists caught wind of Martin’s prediction. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter saw in Martin an opportunity to test a hypothesis: when people with strong convictions are faced with incontrovertible evidence that their beliefs are wrong, those believers will increase their proselytizing efforts rather than admit they’re wrong. Festinger and his little flock of scientists covertly infiltrated the religion and had their hypothesis confirmed when neither the flood nor the saucers materialized: faced with dissonance between faith and reality, Martin and her closest followers doubled down on the former. Festinger and his co-authors wrote up the nutty experience in When Prophecy Fails (1956), which became the basis of the theory of cognitive dissonance and scripture in the field of psychology.

    One nitpick: they lied. As the political scientist Thomas Kelly recently discovered, Festinger’s researchers distorted key findings, misrepresented their actions and betrayed basic scientific standards.

    Kelly first read When Prophecy Fails a couple of years ago. The whole thing seemed too neat. He noticed strange inconsistencies. Festinger, for example, claimed that Martin had only around eight true-believing disciples – and even among those eight there were wafflers. A year later, in his seminal A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance he claimed there were “25 to 30 persons” who “believed completely in the validity” of Martin’s messages. So Kelly went looking for the psychologists’ notes. The firsthand accounts of the researchers’ time among Martin’s followers are held at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library. Festinger’s family donated the box but ordered that it be sealed for 70 years. That decree expired this year. And Kelly has cracked the box open.

    In poring over hundreds of pages of notes, Kelly noticed the researchers had left key observations out of the book. For example, they knew that Martin had engaged in serious evangelizing for months – writing to magazines, teaching neighbors and children – prior to the failure of her prophecies. But they leave nearly all of this out of the book to make their hypothesis appear stronger. Toward the end, the authors write that the core of the group emerged from their reality check with “faith, firm, unshaken, and lasting.” There is simply no evidence of this. In fact, Martin spoke to the UFO magazine Saucerian in 1955 – a year before When Prophecy Fails was published – recanting her belief in the UFO rescues. Kelly calls this fact check “trivial” – yet no one had performed it, apparently. “Maybe snobbery,” he says, explains why no other academic has bothered to look this stuff up.

    But these slip-ups look minor compared to the other offenses Kelly uncovered. Any high schooler can tell you that a scientist isn’t supposed to influence his subject’s thinking. The authors of When Prophecy Fails acknowledge that their presence in the group may have had some influence, but they insist that it was passive and minimal – they were little more than flies on the wall.

    It would be a problem then if, say, one of the lead researchers somehow became a de facto leader within the religion. But, whoopsie, that’s exactly what co-author Henry Riecken did. As “the favorite son” of those higher beings, Riecken earned the special title Brother Henry and was called upon to aid the faithful in moments of spiritual crisis. After one of Martin’s key prophecies failed, Brother Henry issued cryptic words to the group that reinvigorated their faith and, as he put it in his notes, “precipitated” their renewed evangelism.

    But that was not even the researchers’ most disturbing act. Just before the world was set to end, a social worker appeared at the household of the Laugheads, some of Martin’s most dedicated followers. Charles Laughead’s sister had called the worker to check on her nieces and nephews, whom she feared were being neglected by the UFO-obsessed parents. A research assistant answered the door and saw the threat this intruder posed to the study’s continuation; she rebuffed the worker and then urged her higher-ups to delay the case. In a particularly twisted note, the researcher claims she’d also done this because she’d grown affectionate toward the Laugheads’ youngest child and wanted to “protect” her.

    Look through these files – which Kelly has put online as open-source – and one thing you’ll notice is the contempt in which the researchers hold their subjects. Martin’s followers are called “idiots” and “pigs.” These are not the words of neutral observers.

    The irony in all this would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. For decades, When Prophecy Fails has been used to bludgeon religion. In New Testament studies, for example, many academics take it for granted that Christ’s resurrection did not occur, and they’ve used the book’s analysis to explain why evangelism took off even after this anticlimax. These scholars have showered condescension on those they believe hold unexamined – which is to say, non-atheistic – convictions. Never mind that these same intellectuals have fallen victim to the false prophets Festinger, Riecken and Schachter for the past 70 years, or that When Prophecy Fails is just one of a spate of major social-science studies to be debunked in recent years. The prophets of this reigning pseudo-religion – psychology – seem to be failing. Will their followers see the light? Or double down on their delusions?

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Pope Leo is following in Francis’s footsteps

    Pope Leo is following in Francis’s footsteps

    Since Pope Leo XIV’s election in May, Catholics have wondered whether he would continue Pope Francis’s radical agenda or ignite a more conservative reaction. After five months, the verdict appears clear. Leo will not only promote the principal policies in Francis’s agenda, but work to solidify them. This includes suppressing traditionalist theology and liturgy while bolstering activism on the environment, migration and same-sex relationships.

    Traditionalists initially viewed Leo with hope. They noted his ability to recite the Latin Mass, his choice of papal livery favored by Pope Benedict XVI and his meeting with Cardinal Raymond Burke, who supports maintaining the Latin Mass.

    But the new pope refuses to discipline bishops who move against traditionalists. On May 23, just two weeks after Leo’s election, Bishop Michael Martin announced he would end the Latin Mass at four traditionalist parishes in his Charlotte, North Carolina, diocese. The diocese would build a centrally located chapel for the Latin Mass, a lonely new location that would create a two-hour trek for many communicants. More importantly, Catholics would not receive six of the church’s seven sacraments there.

    In Knoxville, Tennessee, Bishop James Mark Beckman went further. On October 7, he said Latin Masses would be discontinued by the end of the year.

    In July, Detroit Archbishop Edward Weisenburger made the most arbitrary move, dismissing three theologians from the archdiocese’s seminary for criticizing Pope Francis. One, Edward Peters, a renowned canon lawyer, said on X he had “retained counsel.”

    When Ralph Martin, another of the three, asked Weisenburger for an explanation, “he said he didn’t think it would be helpful to give any specifics but mentioned something about having concerns about my theological perspectives.”

    Martin, Peters and Eduardo Echeverria questioned Francis’s commitment to orthodoxy, his tendency to stir theological confusion and his refusal to confront clerical sex abuse. Weisenburger, appointed by Francis in February, supports the late pope’s stances on traditionalist worship and migration.

    Detroit’s new archbishop limited the Latin Mass to four chapels in his archdiocese and suggested “canonical penalties” – including excommunication – for Catholics who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, or even support harsh immigration policies.

    Leo provided the velvet glove for Weisenburger’s and Martin’s iron fists in a homily during an October 12 Mass: “Some forms of worship do not foster communion with others and can numb our hearts. In these cases, we fail to encounter the people God has placed in our lives. We fail to contribute, as Mary did, to changing the world…”

    “Changing the world” to reflect Pope Francis’s image describes Leo’s political agenda. The new pope reinforced the commitment to environmental activism while commemorating Francis’s environmentalist encyclical, Laudato si’. He also quoted Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, to disparage opponents. That entreaty, said Leo, “noted that ‘some have chosen to deride’ the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ‘ridicule those who speak of global warming’ and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most.” As part of the festivities, Leo blessed a block of ice.

    On migration, the new pope imitates Francis’s position down to the melodramatic rhetoric. In his October 5 sermon, Leo decried “the coldness of indifference” and “the stigma of discrimination” awaiting migrants with “eyes filled with anguish and hope.”

    Francis denounced “the globalization of indifference” toward migrants during a pastoral visit in 2013 to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where thousands fleeing Libya’s civil war were detained. Ten years later in Marseille, he criticized the “fanaticism of indifference” shown by European governments restricting migration. When it comes to his native land, the Chicago-born pope slammed Donald Trump’s “inhuman treatment of immigrants” being deported in an interview on September 30 and told immigration advocates visiting him on October 8 that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops must become involved: “The church cannot be silent.”

    Leo’s embrace of same-sex relationships appears similar to his predecessor’s, as he showed in late summer. On August 28, Leo met with Sister Lucía Caram, a backer of homosexual marriage. “I would be in favor of homosexuals getting married in the church because God always blesses love,” she said back in 2023.

    Three days later, Leo received the Revd James Martin, the editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America, founder of the Catholic LGBTQ ministry Outreach and a papal communications advisor. Martin promotes LGBTQ ideology, endorses transgender medical procedures for children and opposes biblical teaching against homosexuality.

    On X, Martin wrote he was “moved to hear the same message I heard from Pope Francis on LGBTQ Catholics, which is one of openness and welcome. For me, it was a deeply consoling meeting.”

    Then on September 6, Leo opened St. Peter’s Basilica to LGBTQ pilgrims for a Mass marking the Holy Year Jubilee. More than 1,000 pilgrims participated, with rainbow regalia everywhere. By contrast, the Vatican prohibited another Catholic organization supporting homosexuality, Dignity-USA, from the 2000 Holy Year Jubilee.

    Leo’s most important divergence concerns finances. Unlike Francis, Leo will permit outside agencies to manage the Vatican’s investments to reduce an annual deficit of between €50 million and €90 million. But that divergence generates minimal passion.

    Leo’s papal name offers insight into his agenda. When the College of Cardinals elected Jorge Bergoglio in 2013, the archbishop of Buenos Aires named himself “Francis” to honor St. Francis of Assisi. Leo was that Italian saint’s most devoted acolyte.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Are black-metal bands going Christian?

    Are black-metal bands going Christian?

    In his youth, Emil Lundin became obsessed with the idea of recording the world’s “most evil album.” The lanky, long-haired Swede formed a black-metal band and set to work.

    He faced an immediate obstacle. In making history’s most nefarious musical creation, he could hardly use Swedish, with its singsong tones. English was also out of the question: he didn’t want to sound like ABBA. That left Latin, the native tongue of the occult and, it is said, of demons.

    In a quest for suitably devilish lyrics, he pored over arcane texts. That led him to Latin editions of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers – badass early Christian monks – and St. Augustine’s Confessions. Before he knew it, he was sleeping on a concrete floor, rising in the night to pray and fasting until his cheekbones jutted out. Following his baptism by a Jesuit priest, he proclaimed the birth of a new musical form: Roman Catholic black metal (yet to be embraced by the Sistine Chapel choir).

    Lundin’s conversion took place before the rise of artificial intelligence. If he was trying to create an infernal album today, you could imagine him turning to AI, with its god-like powers, in search of lyrical inspiration. Researchers tell us that seekers are engaging in AI-powered explorations of the occult, using specialized assistants such as Mistral Trismegistus-7B, which can churn out instructions on palm readings, rune casting and even flying a broomstick. Others are using AI tools to discover more about Christianity, asking platforms such as ChatGPT to interpret opaque Bible verses, write tailor-made prayers and offer guidance on moral dilemmas.

    Amid this internet-enhanced spiritual ferment, with its “digital witches” and “tech Christians,” pews across the western world are filling with unexpected occupants: enthusiastic young people. According to a recent Bible Society study, they are portents of a “quiet revival” driven by Gen Z men and seen even in supposedly secular countries such as France and Finland.

    Was Lundin’s conversion a precursor of this spiritual resurgence? Did it mark a shift within the black-metal scene – the start, perhaps, of an unquiet revival?

    Dark and anarchic forms of music have long been a breeding ground for Christian converts. In heavy metal, there’s Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain, who became a born-again Christian after a spiritual experience at a Florida church. Megadeth’s founder Dave Mustaine converted after stints in rehab. W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless used to wear a codpiece that shot out pyrotechnic sparks – and once malfunctioned on stage after cabin pressure had compressed the gunpowder on a transatlantic flight. Long after the burns had healed, he rediscovered his childhood faith.

    Heavy metal gave way to extreme metal, which is similar but faster, angrier and more prone to growling than singing. Its many subgenres include thrash metal, death metal, doom metal and, of course, black metal.

    Historians trace black metal back to a 1982 album of that name by Venom, who embraced satanic imagery with a theatrical flourish. The dark, aggressive sound caught on in the Nordic countries and, mysteriously, Switzerland. By the late 1980s, black metal had established its defining characteristics: anti-religious lyrics, shrieking vocals, fast guitars, relentless drumming, creepy atmospherics and lo-fi production. Frontmen wore “corpse paint” – make-up that made them look like month-old cadavers.

    Any account of the subgenre must reckon with the lurid events of the early 1990s. They revolve around a much mythologized band called Mayhem. It was formed in Oslo in 1984. One of its first members, Kittil Kittilsen, had the good sense to get out early and later became a born-again Christian. In 1991, Mayhem’s vocalist, who went by the name of Dead, committed suicide. In 1992, bassist Varg Vikernes, also called Count Grishnackh, began burning churches, claiming he was exacting revenge for Christianity’s suppression of Norwegian pagan traditions. In 1993, Vikernes murdered Mayhem’s guitarist Euronymous.

    At that stage, Mayhem still hadn’t released a full-length album. That came in 1994, with De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (“Of the Mysteries of Lord Satan”), whose title track featured lyrics in pseudo-Latin. The cover depicted Trondheim’s ancient Nidaros Cathedral, prompting speculation that band members had intended to bomb the edifice on the album’s release date. Mayhem’s grim antics reenergized the black-metal scene, especially in the Nordic countries. But heavily sensationalized accounts of the band created a false impression that the subgenre is a teeming hotbed of criminality, rather than an uncompromisingly bleak artform favored by basement-dwelling teens.

    As Mayhem’s fame spread, an Australian musician who recorded under the name Horde made an album inspired by the band’s raw sound. Hellig Usvart (“Holy Unblack”) contained a twist: its lyrics were vigorously Christian. On tracks such as “Crush the Bloodied Horns of the Goat,” Horde sang about eviscerating a symbolic representation of Satan.

    The album scandalized black-metal fans and reputedly inspired death threats against its record label. Was this, as the Norwegian press suggested, a parody of Mayhem, or was it a sincere expression of Christian faith? The album’s creator came forward to explain that he wanted to shine a light into the “bleak, dark, hopeless, lifeless and negative void” of black metal. Horde had inadvertently created a new sub-subgenre, known as “unblack metal,” “white metal” or “Christian black metal,” often sonically indistinguishable from the original.

    That was the background against which Emil Lundin underwent his conversion. In 2014, his band Reverorum ib Malacht released the album De Mysteriis Dom Christi (“Of the Mysteries of the Lord Christ”), in a pious nod to Mayhem. After he became Catholic, Lundin feared he might be killed by an aggrieved metalhead. In reality, he faced no backlash. This suggests that, despite its violent overtones, black metal may be more genuinely inclusive than many a liberal university campus.

    Lundin came to see black metal as a form of Romanticism: a yearning for a pre-industrial world of mystery, drama and visceral emotion. The early 20th-century critic T.E. Hulme described Romanticism as “spilt religion.” Extreme metal, too, seems like a secular expression of religious instincts. Its anti-religious forms are ironically dependent on Christianity, a primary source of potent words and imagery.

    Did Lundin’s conversion trigger a wider transformation? His bandmate also became a Catholic. And other Catholic extreme metal bands followed, such as Voluntary Mortification and Erlösung (who perform a unique rendition of the hymn “Silent Night”).

    But it’s hard to discern whether this signals a genuine revival because subgenres like black metal are small, obscure and thrive underground. Reports of conversions are hard to corroborate. They may be short-lived or intended only as provocations. But one thing’s certain: there is a well-trod path from hailing Satan to saying Hail Marys.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • The perils of Catholic social media evangelism

    The perils of Catholic social media evangelism

    Jesus, it could be reasonably observed, recruited a motley cast to serve as the first heralds of the gospel.

    An endlessly squabbling band of fishermen, with a few tax collectors and zealots thrown in, the biblical narratives have them endlessly jockeying among themselves for prominence and status before they, to a man, flee when the going gets tough and their Messiah gets arrested.

    In the two thousand years since, the Catholic Church has done its best to balance the inevitable imperfections of its messengers with the perfect truths they are supposed to announce. It’s not always an easy task – and as with so many other things, the internet has made it much more complicated. Especially because there are as many or more self-appointed evangelists as those actually commissioned by the Church to do so, and often with far less formation.

    Recently, one of the new crop of self-made and self-credentialed online evangelists appeared to flame out in grisly spectacular fashion.

    Alex Jurado, a young man with a burgeoning following for his “Voice of Reason” platform, found himself accused via several social media accounts of exchanging sexually explicit messages with a number of women and, allegedly, a 14 year-old girl – which he has vigorously denied, while acknowledging unspecified “mistakes, failures, and sins.”

    Screen shots of the supposed exchanges to one side, the details are a little murky. It’s not exactly clear when all of these exchanges were meant to have happened (if they did). In fact, it’s not immediately clear how old Jurado is himself – different reports suggest he is somewhere between 28 and 30 years old.

    For those unfamiliar with him – as I was myself – it is equally unclear what his credentials are as a professional public explainer and defender of Catholic teaching, though he claims to have spent some brief period in a seminary, at some point, somewhere.

    Other Catholic media sites have been quick to scrub guest appearances by Jurado in response to the accusations, and to distance themselves from the young man. It remains to be seen if and how his situation will resolve itself, but thus far the narrative arc is – like so many things in the online world – unique in the particulars but familiar in its outline.

    In the great before time, before social media and YouTube, before podcasts and livestreams, Catholic evangelists and apologists existed in the same kinds of gate-kept ecospheres as many other areas professional expertise: to get in front of a large audience, generally speaking some institution had to credential you and put you there.

    For Catholics, highly developed systems of doctrine, dogma and canon law favoured the ordained clergy, where most of the institutional knowledge, training and endorsement tends to be focused. And Catholics, unlike their Protestant brethren, retained an innate suspicion of anyone who showed up on the scene without an official hierarchical endorsement.

    As American TV airwaves filled with self-made televangelists in the late 20th century, flashing their Rolexes and private jets and preaching a highly lucrative vision of salvation-as-pyramid-scheme, Catholics tended to shake their heads in amusement – all the more so when these self-ordained profits of prosperity would end up flaming out in scandals of one sort or another.

    All that, though, has changed in an era of instant online celebrity and riches, where “influencing” is a big business with almost no barrier to entry. And in an age of institutional disaffiliation and suspicion, self-proclaimed experts of every variety have shot to celebrity status, opining online about everything from politics to medical science to the practice of journalism.

    Among Catholics, a new micro industry of social media celebrity evangelist-apologist-commentators has flourished, fueled by skepticism of the Church hierarchy in the wake of clerical abuse scandals on one side, and the ever advancing tide of progressive sexual, social and political mores on the other.

    Opportunities for money and sex and never far behind. A trailblazer of the online outsider Catholic persona was Michael Voris, founder of the combative Church Militant website, who pitted himself as a prophetic voice of truth and integrity against a supposedly compromised Church hierarchy and wicked secular world, before the whole project collapsed under the weight of debts, lawsuits and accusations of sexual misconduct.

    One of the more established and credible websites to distance themselves from Jurado last week, Catholic Answers, has already had to watch Patrick Coffin, previously one of its more well-known in-house personalities, depart and slide into an obsession with anti-popes and chemtrails.

    For the Church hierarchy, the phenomenon of celebrity social media Catholicism is a vexing problem. Indeed, the Church might reasonably conclude it has enough problems online with its official ministers.

    The former Bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland was fired by the Vatican in 2023 in no small part because of his social media posts, which increasingly catered to the bishop’s committed personal following while taking aim at the pope personally.

    The Vatican’s former ambassador to Washington, D.C., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a quiet career Church civil servant who retired in 2016, went viral at the height of the sex abuse scandals of 2018 when he publicly accused Pope Francis of covering up for the later defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope step down.

    From there, the archbishop became a fixture in the MAGA firmament, addressing “Stop the Steal” rallies after the 2020 election and hailing Donald Trump as a divinely-sent defender of Christian civilization, before deciding the Donald was soft on LGBT issues and switching his endorsement to Vladimir Putin and finally being excommunicated by the Vatican last year.

    Minnesota’s Bishop Robert Barron, whose Word on Fire media company racks up considerable digital engagement across platforms, pitches himself as a patient pastor and friendly teacher, wide open to dialogue with all comers. Yet he’s also routinely savaged as being “Trumpy” for holding the Church’s teaching on, for example, trans issues, or for failing to make immigration a front line priority.

    Social media, perhaps sadly, isn’t going anywhere. While it has become an unignorable reality, almost no one holds it out as a good thing getting better – in fact, the received wisdom is the opposite.

    But, as long as there are souls to be saved and money to be made, Catholics of all ranks and kinds will be there, bringing a fair share of scandal along with the gospel.

  • Happy Birthday, Aleister Crowley

    Happy Birthday, Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley, who was born 150 years ago today, was once one of my idols. No one else seemed to match the panache of someone who could make a name for themselves as a magician, poet, artist, novelist, prophet, journalist, mountaineer, and spy.

    Yet, the outsized influence of such characters frequently attracts legions of charlatans. I met one during my adolescence when I became a student of a Tibetan Buddhist lama who claimed to be Aleister’s living son. It did not immediately occur to this bright-eyed seeker that the alleged son’s chief interest seemed to be in shagging his female students, but eventually it did, and I grew disillusioned. Naturally, I took off instead to learn at the feet of a more reputable Tibetan Buddhist lama; only to find that this new guru had not merely been sleeping with almost every vulnerable woman that walked through the door, but had also taken to pilfering the temple’s donations on late night pay-per-view and Chinese takeaways off London’s Caledonian Road.

    Despite the various hucksters that his name attracts, the sheer force of Aleister Crowley’s personality makes him one of those few people who still seem to merit a new biography almost every year. He haunted fin-de-siecle England, developing a New Age religion called Thelema, and devoting much of his erratic life to the promotion of something he called magick, which, he claimed, was the art of transforming physical reality by pure will. The Beatles featured him on the album cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Jimmy Page took up residence in his old home, Boleskin Manor. And Timothy Leary, the leader of the 1960s psychedelic renaissance and coiner of the term “turn on, tune in, drop out” famously wished that the great occultist were alive so he could witness his final apotheosis through the mass consumption of LSD by rollicking Harvard freshmen.

    Crowley’s life is almost too colorful to fit into a single volume, which is perhaps why so many treatments of him tend to focus on niche corners of his personality and career. He was born in 1875 to a wealthy brewery-owning family of hardcore Christian Protestants, who belonged to a group known as the Plymouth Brethren. The young Aleister (then Alick) idealized his father and appears to have gotten his knack for relentless proselytizing from him. The senior Crowley, rich enough from his commercial ventures to devote his time to provocative sermonizing, would ask local punters what they would be doing next year. And then? He would say, to which they would describe ambitions for the following year. And then? Crowley senior would ask, over and over again, until inevitably the local pub visitor would say: well, I suppose, then I shall die. To which he replied: that’s right – so you’d better get right with God!

    His relationship with his mother seems to have been even more formative. By all accounts utterly overbearing and puritanical, she labelled him “The Beast” (a nickname that would stay with him for the rest of his life) from the Book of Revelation, the only section of the New Testament that Crowley enjoyed reading during the daily Bible study sessions that the Brethren kept up. When he was eleven his father died, and Crowley was shipped off to a series of tutors, where he would begin to appreciate a life outside the pious and cloistered and world of his parents. Although he would leave everything about their actual worldview behind him, Crowley seems to have carried on his rebellion against his parents through to his dying day. 

    Soon, he would arrive at Cambridge, where he developed a keen interest in local prostitutes, chess, and the burgeoning secret societies practicing a re-invented form of ceremonial magic. (He later added a k to the end of magic to distinguish it from the increasingly popular stage magic of the Edwardian period). Crowley joined The Golden Dawn, an esoteric group of practitioners that had built a spiritual system around a hodge-podge of Kabbalah, Freemasonry, and astrology. He soon rose to the top and then fell out with the other leaders of the secret society, a pattern that would recur throughout his life, eventually going to law for the right to publish their ritual materials to the wider public.

    Aleister Crowley continues to appeal to teenage boys across the world because he epitomizes like few others that strange period known as adolescence

    A few years later Crowley married. During his honeymoon in Egypt he claimed to have been contacted by a daemon called Aiwass, who spoke through his wife when they were visiting the Cairo Museum. Through her channeling, this spirit dictated what would become Crowley’s magnum opus, The Book of the Law, which, despite its supposed supernatural provenance, curiously resembles his own style of writing and humor. Anyway, like any good author, he used this new book as a means to promote his personal brand, bouncing around everywhere from Mexico (where he claims to have used a spell to make himself invisible) to the deserts of North Africa (where he engaged in a public homosexual, hashish-infused ritual to conjure the demon Choronzon from inside a magic circle). He also took his wife and young daughter on a dangerous trek across China (while trying to mentally invoke his Holy Guardian Angel), and established a proto-hippie commune in Sicily. The commune was shut down on the orders of Mussolini after a public outcry over reports of acolytes being ordered by Crowley to cut themselves with razors whenever they accidentally “strengthened the ego” by using the pronoun “I,” practices which may been responsible for the mysterious death of one of the students. 

    And for all the mystical mumbojumbo that we still associate with Crowley, one of the most interesting parts of his life was his relationship to politics. We now know that he wrote at least some propaganda for the German war effort during WWI. Was this simply another publicity scheme, or did he truly side with England’s Teutonic rivals? Crowley himself claims that his war journalism was simply a ruse to assist the British intelligence services in their efforts against the Kaiser and Irish separatism, for his own bizarre and eccentric writing appears to have helped to – for a time – discredit the cause of Celtic nationalism (he declared that the Irish were, in fact, the lost descendants of Atlantis). The great magus also claimed to have midwifed the entry of the United States into the war as an agent of British influence, knowing it was the best shot his country had to beat Germany. Whether this was in fact true, or just an excuse, remains unclear. 

    Now that 150 years have passed since his birth, we still await some valedictory summing up of the significance of his life and thought. The myth that has grown up around Crowley, built by himself and his many followers, is so formidable that it can be hard to see the saga clearly. One can certainly find slivers of genuine spiritual insight in many of his works, particularly those in which he is actually trying to seriously expound on a topic – like yoga. But the problem with Crowley is that one never quite knows when he is pulling your leg. His knack for publicity was unrivalled, and the dire financial straits he often found himself in meant that many of his published works were simply potboilers to pay off his many debts. He was both an eccentric genius and a morally abominable person, particularly in how he treated his wife and children. He alienated almost everyone he came across, and few can read the letters they wrote about him without wincing. 

    To my mind, his real significance was as an omen of the future – the first of a type. Why did I get my long-suffering parents to expend so many hundreds of pounds on these books of spells, magical formulae, and ancient hieroglyphs of no practical value whatsoever? Before people sold supplements on the internet, à la Andrew Tate, Crowley was flogging useless spellbooks to impressionable and wealthy Victorian collectors of esoterica. Before social media trolling, à la Candace Owens, Crowley was edgelording his way to media attention and commercial success by declaring himself a satanist. Did he actually believe what he was saying? Well, do any of them? 

    In the end, Aleister Crowley continues to appeal to teenage boys across the world because he epitomizes like few others that strange period known as adolescence; where rebellion against authority, curiosity about bizarre Eastern religions, experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, and intrepid sexual exploration all jostle together. Most of us, however, eventually, grow out of these phases and begrudgingly accept both the mantle of responsibility and professional obligations. Aleister Crowley, despite the surprisingly sophisticated nature of some of his thought, appears never to have needed to. Was it because he had been too deeply committed to his publicity strategy, or because he had truly transcended the bourgeois sexual hangups of the herd, or maybe because he was simply too messed up from his fundamentalist upbringing? Despite the legion of biographies, it is unlikely that we will ever know.

    Whether or not Crowley truly inaugurated the “Age of Horus” from the boarding house in Hastings where he passed away, alone and riddled with the opium addiction that accompanied him through much of his adult life, is still debated amongst today’s occultists. That he unleashed at least some part of our cynical, hyper-individualistic, and sloppily spiritualistic culture is, I think, tragically undeniable. Happy 150th birthday, Aleister Crowley.

  • Is the religious right shifting?

    Is the religious right shifting?

    In 2021, for the first time in 1,400-odd years, Britain ceased to have a Christian majority. The United Kingdom, the political entity of which the island of Great Britain has been a part since 1801, has had its share of not-quite-Christian prime ministers over the years, with a handful of agnostics and quiet atheists. But in 2022, for the first time, the UK had a prime minister who practiced a non-Christian religion – and Hinduism had the distinction of claiming the first post-Christian head of state, Rishi Sunak.

    The West’s ethnic and religious foundations have already shifted in our great cities

    It may be some time before an American president is Hindu. Already, however, there are several prominent Hindus in the Trump orbit and near the top of the Republican party. Vivek Ramaswamy hopes to be elected governor of Ohio next year, and his ambitions don’t stop at the state level. His 2024 run for president in the GOP primaries might have been less about winning the nomination than about raising his profile by serving, at times, as a proxy for Donald Trump. But he may yet get his turn at the top of the national ticket.

    Ramaswamy is rumored to have a rivalry with J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator who became Vice-President. Vance is Trump’s political heir apparent; if he makes it to the White House, he’ll be the first Roman Catholic Republican president. His wife Usha, however, would be America’s first Hindu first lady. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is the first Hindu ever to serve at the cabinet level. She had earlier, as a Democrat, been the first Hindu elected to Congress. There have been four others since then, all of them Democrats.

    The year Gabbard first won a seat in Congress – 2012 – is also the year America ceased to have a Protestant majority, according to findings by the Pew Research Center. That was chiefly because of the rise of “nones” – Americans with no religious affiliation, most of whom come from Christian backgrounds. But Islam, Hinduism and other faiths are growing. Only about 1 percent of Americans are Hindu. Yet that makes Hindus as numerous as Episcopalians, who were once America’s establishment (if not actually established) Christian denomination: the church of George Washington, most signatories of the Declaration of Independence and roughly a quarter of all our presidents.

    Least year, a delegation of Hindu Indian nationalists spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC. The international character of NatCon draws gibes from critics, but there’s nothing illogical about nationalists of different nations cooperating to promote the principle of nationalism itself, with liberal internationalism or globalism as a common enemy. Yet at dinner a Protestant friend told me he felt uneasy about the polytheist presence.

    Two generations earlier, his grandfather might have had similar misgivings about getting involved in a coalition with Catholics or Jews. Since at least the 1980s, however, Republican leaders have made a point of professing their fealty to the exquisitely nondenominational thing that is “Judeo-Christian values.” Perhaps now it’ll have to be Semitico-Indo-European values?

    The American right has always had a theoretical and theological problem here. Most on the right affirm that religion is most definitely the root of our nation and civilization. But it’s never convenient to specify exactly what that religion is: Episcopalianism? Certainly not. Catholicism? Evangelicalism? An ecumenical blend of theologically contradictory denominations with Judaism thrown in as well? (Never mind that Judaism itself comes in many varieties.) And don’t forget the Mormons.

    With politics demanding such flexibility of the religious right, it doesn’t seem likely Hinduism will be where lines get drawn. But this, of course, highlights the impossibility of claiming that a heterogeneous political coalition is restoring a single faith. Yet there is an overarching tradition here, albeit one that exists in tension with strong orthodox belief. America’s Founding Fathers were, for the most part, distinctly latitudinarian: George Washington may have attended Episcopalian services, but it’s not clear he believed in the Trinity. John Adams was an avowed Unitarian. Thomas Jefferson redacted the Gospels to eliminate any trace of the supernatural; he self-identified on one occasion as an Epicurean. Later leaders dear to the right could be just as elusive in their religious commitments: Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are cases in point.

    As for Hinduism, conservatism’s own founding philosopher-statesman, Edmund Burke, not only championed respect for the religion in India but offered a greenhouse on his Beaconsfield estate for the use of a visiting Brahmin envoy, Hunand Rao, who needed a place to perform Hindu rites. This was something of a scandal both to Enlightenment rationalists of the era and to Christians who thought Burke far too culturally accommodating. The traditions that Burke and America’s Founders sought to uphold were capacious.

    The most devout men and women of today’s right want something more. Yet the demographics of the United States and Europe suggest the left and right alike will feel the need to enlist support beyond Judeo-Christian boundaries. If Zohran Mamdani succeeds in becoming New York’s mayor, two of the largest cities in the English-speaking world will have Muslim mayors from left-wing parties: the other being Sadiq Khan in London, where roughly a quarter of school-age children are Muslim. In European cities such as Vienna, the proportion is even higher.

    The West’s ethnic and religious foundations have already shifted in our great cities, opening a gulf between them and the surrounding countries. The political geniuses of the 18th century built their systems on human nature, not just the conditions of the moment. Just how natural and adaptable those systems are is now being put to a test.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • How Islam and the Bible are fueling France’s ‘baptism boom’

    How Islam and the Bible are fueling France’s ‘baptism boom’

    You have probably heard that something extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church in France.

    The French bishops’ conference announced in April that more than 10,000 adults were due to be baptized in 2025 – a 45 percent increase on the year before.

    It’s not just adult baptisms that are booming. A record 19,000 people, many young, attended this year’s Paris to Chartres pilgrimage. An unprecedented 13,500 high school students took part in the 2025 Lourdes FRAT pilgrimage, a major annual youth event.

    The country is also seeing what French media call a “boom biblique”: a rapid rise in sales of the Bible. Religious bookstores report a 20 percent increase in purchases since 2024.

    It’s easy to state these facts. But it’s harder to discern their cause. Why are young people flocking to the Catholic Church more than 200 years after it was violently ejected from the public square during the French Revolution?

    News reports – both in France and the English-speaking world – have only scratched the surface of the phenomenon. But the most in-depth investigation to date has just been published in France. It’s called Enquête sur ces jeunes qui veulent devenir chrétiens (“Inquiry into Why Young People Want to Become Christians”) and the author is Antoine Pasquier, a journalist at the French Catholic weekly Famille Chrétienne.

    Pasquier explores what young French adults seeking baptism as catechumens say about themselves. He mixes their observations with his own insights as a catechist who saw the wave arrive in his parish and watched as it took on breathtaking proportions.

    The dynamics he uncovers are unexpected.

    For example, through his interviews with catechumens, Pasquier finds that reading the Bible plays a more fundamental role in conversions than the internet and social media. Also, many young seekers arrive at church with an idea of religion shaped not by Christianity but by Islam.

    The book, currently available only in French, offers guidance to Church leaders as they grapple with this unforeseen influx. Pasquier calls for a deep transformation of French Catholicism, from a community resigned to decline to a “catechumenal Church.” He sees signs that this shift may be beginning.

    Pasquier spent 10 years as a reporter for a French regional weekly newspaper before joining Famille Chrétienne in 2013. He has coordinated the Catholic magazine’s investigations into topics such as the abuse crisis. He is married, with four children, and has accompanied young catechumens at his church in the Paris region since 2020.

    In an interview with the Pillar, he discussed the genesis of his book, what surprised him about the catechumens, and the French Church’s lessons for Catholics elsewhere.

    Catholics around the world are fascinated by what’s occurring in France. How would you explain briefly what’s happening to someone living outside of France?

    Since 2020, France has seen a significant influx of catechumens from all ages and social backgrounds. The figures speak for themselves: in 2025, the number of adults seeking baptism is the highest ever recorded since the French bishops’ conference began tracking catechumens in 2002. For the first time, the symbolic threshold of 10,000 adult baptisms has been surpassed.

    Over two years, the growth is remarkable: 5,463 baptisms in 2023, 7,135 in 2024 (+30.6 percent), and 10,384 in 2025 (+45.5 percent). In other words, the number of adult baptisms nearly doubled between 2023 and 2025 (+90 percent).

    Among these 10,384 newly baptized adults, the 18 to 25 age group now represents the largest share, with approximately 4,360 catechumens (42 percent). Adolescent baptisms (ages 11-17) also show strong growth. In 2025, there were 7,404, compared to 1,547 in 2022 (+76 percent). In just three years, the numbers have multiplied nearly fivefold.

    Paradoxically, this phenomenon occurs in an ecclesial context marked by the sexual abuse crisis and a decline in vocations. This completely unexpected influx has caught parishes off guard, forcing them to adapt quickly. Initially taken aback, French Catholics are now seeking the best ways to welcome and support these seekers of God.

    Is your book the first in-depth exploration of why so many young people are becoming Catholics in France?

    Until now, this phenomenon has only been analyzed by media outlets, whether Catholic or secular. Drawing on the statistics published and interpreted annually by the French bishops’ conference, these media have attempted to explain the reasons behind this influx of catechumens. Numerous testimonies have also been published.

    As a journalist for Famille Chrétienne magazine, I began working on this topic three years ago. However, my book is the first comprehensive investigation that seeks to deeply analyze the reasons why these young people are choosing to become Christians.

    I deliberately focused on the 15-25 age group, first, because it is the best represented demographic (45 percent of French catechumens in 2025, or more than 8,000 young people), and second because their pathway differs from that of older adults.

    When did you first become aware of this phenomenon?

    Since 2020, I have been accompanying high school students preparing for baptism in my parish in the Paris region. As a catechist, I’ve seen a growing number of young people in my group who are seeking God and eager to become Christians.

    They often came in groups, frequently with friends. We also began noticing them more often and in greater numbers at Sunday Masses, approaching during Communion with their arms crossed to receive the priest’s blessing.

    This personal observation was echoed by other catechists in different parishes and towns. After doing some research, this time as a journalist, it quickly became clear to me that this phenomenon was nationwide and completely unprecedented.

    Many reports stress the role of the internet in the new wave of conversions. But you’ve discovered that the Bible plays an even more important role. Can you explain why this is the case?

    Gen Z is raised on social media. Influencers on these platforms share increasingly specific and well-crafted content, created by Christian influencers, which provide answers to their existential and spiritual questions.

    But these networks are not the place of their conversion. The conversion happens earlier, in a natural way, I would say. Social media and the internet complement and support their conversion.

    The Bible, on the other hand, plays a role much earlier in their journey. Once they decide to deepen their spiritual search within the Christian faith, the Bible becomes essential for them. Almost all the young people I accompany or have interviewed tell me they bought, opened, and read the Bible before taking any official steps with the Church.

    Alongside the church and Mass, the Bible is a reliable and easily identifiable reference point for them. They think, “I want to be Christian, how do I do it?” And the answer is obvious to them: “I need to read the Bible and go to Mass.” The strong growth in Bible sales, both in France and abroad, reflects this new enthusiasm.

    You note that many young French people who approach the Catholic Church come with an idea of religion that’s shaped by Islam, with its stress on fasting practices, etc. Why is that, and what challenges does it bring?

    It’s primarily the public and overt expression of Islam that challenges them. Some of their Muslim friends openly embrace their faith and religious identity without reservation. This prompts our young people to also make their growing Christian faith visible. This is expressed through wearing a cross necklace, sometimes a chapel veil for young women, or by observing the practices of various liturgical seasons, particularly Lent.

    Lent, with its radicalism, attracts these young people searching for guidance and meaning. They sometimes tend to view this period as a “Christian Ramadan.” Catechists must take care to explain the differences clearly and remind them that Christianity is not primarily a religion of observance but of personal and inner conversion.

    What surprised you most about the young people becoming Catholic?

    Their determination and patience. Some have been on a journey for years, hidden from view, out of fear of being misunderstood by friends or family.

    I think of a young woman who waited nine years between her first time entering a church and her official request for baptism. Another took three years between her first reading of the Gospel, alone in her room, and attending her first Mass with a friend. Their faith is already so strong that they are not afraid to wait this long to receive baptism.

    You call for the French Church to be transformed into a “catechumenal Church.” What would this look like?

    The early Church, the Apostolic Church, was by its very nature a catechumenal Church. When the Apostles and the Virgin Mary received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, they immediately left the Upper Room to proclaim the Good News of Christ and performed the first baptisms (Acts 2:41).

    In the early communities, Christians — who were therefore neophytes — listened to the teachings of the Apostles. This teaching was centered on proclaiming the kerygma, the core of the Christian faith. These communities were also attentive to each other’s salvation and to the work of the Holy Spirit among them.

    A catechumenal Church is a Church attentive to proclaiming the kerygma, to the salvation of each and every person, and listening to the Holy Spirit. These dispositions will help our Church today to be ever more attractive and open to those who seek God.

    Is there anything that other countries that are also seeing a boom in adult baptisms could learn from the Church in France?

    The Church in France is gradually coming to terms with what is happening. I’m not sure it has many lessons to teach other Churches.

    The first to understand what was happening were the catechists, those closest to the grassroots. They reacted quickly and took steps to address this unexpected wave. If there is a lesson to draw from France, it is this adaptability on the ground.

    The Church must be careful not to remain trapped in old patterns or reflexes. The mindset of “We’ve always done it this way!” is no longer viable. Without losing its essence, the Church must adapt to these new Christians, responding to their questions, expectations, and thirst.

    Pope Leo XIV himself says it well: “The crisis of faith and its transmission, together with the hardships related to ecclesial belonging and practice, invite us to rediscover the passion and courage for a new proclamation of the Gospel. At the same time, various people who seem to be distant from the faith often return to knock on the doors of the Church, or open themselves to a new search for spirituality, which at times does not find adequate language and forms in the usual pastoral offerings.”

    This article was originally published in the Pillar.

  • Do Jews have a future in Britain? 

    Do Jews have a future in Britain? 

    I was on my way to synagogue yesterday when I got news that was surprising and unsurprising at the same time. That there had been an attack at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur was a shock, but only the location and the timing. The fact that terror had struck our community felt like the confirmation of our worst fears – and something that was grimly predictable. 

    For as long as I can remember, Jewish life in the UK has been closely guarded and protected. My childhood synagogue in the leafy London suburb of Surbiton was behind locked gates with security guards posted outside when anyone was in the building. My Jewish newspaper office today has similar protections and an address we’re told must never be made public. Every kosher shop in North London has a permanent security presence, twice or three times that of a supermarket in a dodgy area. 

    British Jews are always watching over their shoulders, silently clocking the escape routes out of synagogues and constantly feeling like a target when we congregate. We are a group that, by virtue of existing, is targeted. Jewish schoolchildren are told to change their uniforms when going home on public transport, observant Jewish men hide their kippahs with baseball caps when on the tube, everyone does the little things they can to try and feel safe. 

    All of this of course, was true before October 7 and it will be true for a long time after this war ends. But there has been a remarkable uptick in the last two years. The right-thinking consensus that anti-Semitism was bad is crumbling before our eyes, as the horseshoe theory that sees us hit from the far-left and the far-right becomes stronger every day.

    The Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization that collects data on anti-Semitism in Britain has recorded an unprecedented rise in all manner of attacks on British Jews, from casual anti-Semitic remarks to violent assaults on visibly Jewish people, buildings and communities. Just last month, a man was arrested in North London for a spate of attacks where he smeared his own excrement on synagogues. 

    The reaction to what’s happening in the Middle East is coming home to affect British Jews, making us feel like outsiders in a country that we’ve lived in and loved for centuries. I see it all the time in my own life and work. The social media channels of the Jewish Chronicle are inundated with hateful, anti-Semitic comments every day that have nothing to do with Israel. I’ve seen anti-Semitic graffiti appear all over my neighborhood in south London and I’ve been accused of “killing kids” at a friend’s birthday party by someone I had just met. 

    The nature of anti-Semitism means that it is ever-present, always under the surface. And it has been allowed to fester. Partially by a government that through its own poor politicking is pandering to extremists in its own party, but also by a media so desperate to raise the temperature of debate in Britain, that it forgets that Jewish people’s safety is at stake. Anti-Semites across the UK and in public life have been allowed to grow in confidence, to march on the streets of London, a city that Jews have thrived in, with placards of blood-drenched swastikas and depictions of Jewish leaders with horns. 

    Britain has always been seen as different to the rest of Europe when it comes to Jewish life. For years, our community has looked at violence in places like France, where Islamist terror attacks against Jews are a regular fixture and thought, “That wouldn’t happen here”. 

    But now it has. The events of yesterday will be a scar on Britain’s Jews, in the same way that the Tree of Life shooting, and the HyperCache attack, and the Boulder firebombing forever changed those communities. The Jews of Manchester and those across the UK will remember Heaton Park for years to come. There will also be soul-searching. Does this mean we should all go to Israel, to live among a different type of Islamist threat? What can we do to prevent this happening ever again? 

    There’s a certain feeling among British Jews that in any country other than Israel we are not in control of our own destiny, that our safety in the UK or in any other country is dependent on the government of the day listening to our pleas and taking our security seriously. To the credit of the police, they acted quickly to protect the Jews of Heaton Park. But many Jews today will be feeling that the attack was grimly predictable, and wondering why the government or the police allowed this country to become a place where Islamists’ toxic ideas and hatred of Israel are allowed to take the lives of British Jews. 

    Killing Jews in Manchester or London or Paris or Washington DC will not bring this war to an end. Not a single Palestinian life is saved by the taking of one from a synagogue worshipper. Yesterday’s attack feels like a turning point. If British Jews can be killed simply for being Jewish, then do the rest of us have a future here?

  • Will America outlaw Sharia law?

    Will America outlaw Sharia law?

    Florida Representative Randy Fine and Texas Representative Keith Self introduced the “No Sharia Act” last weekend in the U.S. House of Representatives “to ensure that no U.S. court, public agency, or legal institution can ever enforce or legitimize Sharia law. On X, Congressman Fine wrote, “You don’t get to come to this country and demand that our legal system accommodate your oppressive laws.”

    Meanwhile, Texas has operated as ground zero for the fight. On September 12, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared on September 8 that Sharia law was illegal in Texas. In a post on Facebook the Governor wrote:

    “In Texas, we believe in equal rights under the law for all men, women, & children. Any legal system that flouts human rights is BANNED in the state of Texas. SHARIA LAW AND SHARIA CITIES ARE BANNED IN THE STATE OF TEXAS.”

    The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) fired back, “The First Amendment guarantees that Texans of all faiths can freely and openly follow the personal rules of their religion, and no politician can take away that right… Like Jewish and Christian practices, Islamic practices in America can also encompass rules involving houses of worship, burial practices, estate distribution, and business contracts, which courts can and must uphold as long as those rules do not violate public policy.”

    No, they must not. The red line for courts is not “public policy,” but rather the Constitution and laws of the United States. It is therefore no surprise that on September 12, Governor Greg Abbott upped the ante, signing a bill to ban Sharia compounds in Texas. In particular, Abbott and Texas legislators responded to a proposal by the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) to plan a community of thousands of Muslims-only in Josephine, Texas, where Sharia law would dictate daily life, commerce and education.

    The notion that radical Islamist ideology or Sharia law must comprehensively govern Western society is a dangerous and anti-American viewpoint that would ultimately prove destructive to our civil liberties. A fundamentalist reading of Islamic law is at odds in several critical respects with core American promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A century ago, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson opined, “The law of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western law.”

    Consider the contrasts. The First Amendment is a cornerstone of American public life. Under Sharia law, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are a fiction. Non-Muslims are considered inferior to Muslims. Non-believers must be converted, and in some parts of the Middle East governed by Sharia law, “pagans” have been and are still being beheaded for their failure to submit to Islam.

    The Fourteenth Amendment, among other provisions, guarantees Americans equal protection under the law. Under Sharia law, men and women do not possess the same rights. Again, in some parts of the Middle East governed by Sharia law, women are not permitted a range of rights of privileges ranging from education to a driver’s license. Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for her advocacy for women’s education in Pakistan.

    Article I of the Constitution protects the right to contract from state interference. Under Sharia law, traditional American banking methods and a range of American consumer goods are barred in toto. The charging of interest is forbidden; gambling is outlawed; and sales of alcohol, pork and carnivores are absolutely barred. Sharia law invalidates contracts involving excessive risk or uncertainty. This fall, a Houston imam launched Sharia patrols to warn stores to stop selling “haraam” (products prohibited under Islamic law) or face boycotts, demonstrations and community “educat[ion].”

    Under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, “the government may not enact laws that suppress religious belief or practice.” Of course, Muslims, including fundamentalist Muslims, have a Constitutional right to freely participate in their own deeply held religious convictions. However, under our Constitution, they may not impose their beliefs on others, certainly not on whole communities, and most assuredly not at the tip of a spear.

    American courts have no obligation to endorse Sharia law when that worldview conflicts with the long cherished fundamental rights of U.S. citizens, including the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to contract and basic human equality. We are still one nation under God: no religion or sect can carve out an enclave exempting even the faithful from the protections or obligations of American law in these United States.