Tina Beattie in Open Democracy.

If we are to understand [the upsurge in various forms of religious extremism] and its social and political implications, then we must go beyond the headline-grabbing confrontations between religious and atheist extremists.

She says, contributing her own mite to the headline-grabbing confrontations between religious and atheist ‘extremists,’ in particular by using the phrase ‘atheist extremists’ at all. What are atheist extremists? And in what sense of the word are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens – Beattie’s chosen examples – extremists? Do they advocate violence against believers? Suppression of believers? Forcible silencing of believers? No. They disagree with them, that’s all; they think believers are wrong, and they say so. In what sense … Read the rest

I see on Tina Beattie’s page at Roehampton that one of her teaching interests is Religion and Human Rights. That’s a strange pairing, I thought – even stranger than those pairings of ‘Religion and Ethics’ that we see everywhere (such as at the BBC). Why religion and human rights? It is so often bishops or priests or mullahs who oppose human rights rather than supporting them – it seems odd to link them. The pairing of religion and ethics gives religion the credit for ideas and views that are often entirely secular; pairing religion with human rights would seem to do the same thing.

Human Rights Watch is aware of the tension.

Is there a schism between the

About this exorcist guy…You know how the pope likes to put up this front of being rational and scholarly and reasonable? Well…the church he’s at the top of has exorcists. The Chief Exorcist of Rome is very emphatic on the point that Satan is for real and that anyone who says otherwise is engaged in ‘true heresy.’ Satan is not a metaphor, or an abstraction, Satan is a fella. Father Gabriele Amorth wants everyone to make no mistake about that.

Those modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken. Theirs is true heresy; that is, it is openly in contrast with the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church.

So much … Read the rest