Posted in religion, Art on Jun 21st, 2011 Comments
Museums are our new churches, as is commonly agreed. Millions of people flock to them to be uplifted, inspired, or distracted from everyday cares for an hour or two by encountering magnificent art. But while churches know exactly how to present art in order to foster faith and remind us of the Christian virtues, couldn't our museums do a better job at displaying art in a way that fully engages our emotions? Aren’t all those academic categories – “the 19th century”, “the Northern Italian School” – dry and dull? Aren't museums just places where great art goes to die? Why can't museums organize their collections in such a way as to convey art’s life-enhancing possibilities and even inspire us to become better people?
But isn't that taking the "art as religion" line a bit too seriously? It implies that museums have a social function, even a didactic role to play. Do we want to visit museums in order to be told by invisible curators to think and feel in a certain way? And while it may be the case that religious art was created to instruct the minds and improve the souls of the congregation, can that be said of modern art whose purpose is to challenge, question or shock the viewer? And don’t ever soaring visitor numbers prove that our museums are already doing a brilliant job?
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"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" So wrote William Wordsworth at the start of the French Revolution, and that spirit of euphoria still broadly infects the young people who massed in their tens of thousands in Egypt and Tunisia to oust their hated rulers. But in countries with no tradition of democracy, where corruption is entrenched and jobs are scarce, the political and economic aspirations of these youthful revolutionaries are likely to be disappointed. Add to that the fact that the Islamists are far better organised than the liberal groups and are set to come out on top in the forthcoming elections, and things begin to look very gloomy indeed.
But is this view all too pessimistic? The fundamental barrier of fear has been removed and the new democrats are mobilising themselves to make sure that the benefits of change trickle down to all. There's even talk of a possible split amongst the Islamists between the reactionary old guard and a more open-minded younger generation. As one of the two young Egyptians taking part in this debate will argue, if their demands aren't met, "the Egyptian masses know their way back to Tahrir Square!"
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Posted in Science, religion on Apr 11th, 2011 Comments
Where do our ideas about morality and meaning come from? Most people – from religious extremists to secular scientists – would agree on one point: that science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, science's failure to explain meaning and morality has become the primary justification for religious faith and the reason why even many non-believers feel obliged to accord respect to the beliefs of the devout.
Sam Harris, the American philosopher and neuroscientist, comes to the Intelligence² stage to argue that these views are mistaken – that amidst all the competing arguments about how we should lead our lives, science can show us that there are right and wrong answers. This means that moral relativism is mistaken and that there can be neither a Christian nor a Muslim morality – and that ultimately science can and should determine how best to live our lives.
Sam Harris will be discussing his latest book The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values with Revd Dr Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral.
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Posted in Politics, religion, Travel on Feb 1st, 2011 Comments
Jerusalem is the Holy City, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths, the prize of countless conquerors, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilisations.
In this talk historian Simon Sebag Montefiore will take us on a 3000-year journey through Jerusalem’s many incarnations, through the wars, adventures, love-affairs and messianic revelations of the men and women who created, destroyed and left their mark on the city – from Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad to Cleopatra, Herod and Caligula, from Saladin to the Kaiser and Churchill, from Disraeli and Lloyd George to Moshe Dayan, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat.
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Interview with John Gray
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Posted in religion, Britain on Nov 3rd, 2010 Comments
The live Intelligence Squared debate packed out the Royal Geographic Society venue on an evening when the London Underground was on strike. The performances – Dom Anthony Sutch as the utterly compelling modern-day portly Abbot asking for the right kind of bashing; the angry intensity of Peter Hitchens; the panache of Howard Jacobson’s eulogy for language; the cut and thrust of Geoffrey Robertson; the sweet reason of Matthew Parris and the calm, measured performance of the former Archbishop of Canterbury – were a plentiful reward for any tribulation of the journey.
Underneath the brilliance of the performances lies some of the most serious questions of our time: should the state be neutral when it comes to religion? how far from neutrality is Britain today? and what special dispensations from the laws of a secular liberal society can we contemplate in the name of religious belief – how far does tolerance require us to tolerate intolerance?
You can read tomes of political theory on this. Or you can watch and listen carefully to this beautiful set of performances and find embedded in them encapsulations of almost every position taken on these tricky, subtle and crucial questions of our time.
Speakers for the motion - George Carey, Peter Hitchens and Howard Jacobson
Speakers against the motion - Matthew Parris, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Dom Antony Sutch
Chaired by Jonathan Freedland
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Posted in religion, United States on Oct 29th, 2010 Comments
The Crystal Cathedral, a 10,000 plus mega-church in Orange County, California, filed for bankruptcy this week. The Crystal Cathedral was the original tele-evangelical church, and its "Hour of Power" television show is broadcast all over the world. Last month, the Reverend Eddy Long, star pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, who preaches family virtues and has been feted by George Bush at the White House, was accused of sexually harassing three young men. Ted Haggard, who disbanded the massive New Life Church of Colorado Springs when a gay prostitute revealed their rapport, briefly became an insurance salesman before announcing this summer that, cured of his homosexuality, he was starting again.
The mega-church movement is closely associated with the rise of American evangelical styles of worship in Latin America and Africa. When the Chilean miners emerged from the mine two weeks ago, they were wearing T-shirts sent to them from a megachurch in Georgia. Evangelical churches have been credited with - or implicated in - re-building the grass-roots of the American right over the past 15 years, with the Tea Party being the latest vehicle for that coalition.
The evangelical movement has a globally influential role, and the megachurches are an important element of it. They have huge congregations with inspirational, charismatic pastors. They are run like businesses and, it might seem, often with rather business-like objectives of raising funds and satisfying customers.
In this Skype debate which brings together a London audience and speakers from the US, we wanted to hear from insiders to American Protestantism. This is not a debate about the rights and wrongs of religion, but rather a very specific debate from within Protestant Christianity about the form of worship found inside the megachurches.
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During the ongoing global financial crisis, the values on which our society and economic structures are based have been called into question. In a new book to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of The Guardian, have brought together a collection of leading commentators to examine the role of morality and ethics in business. At this event, both discuss these fundamental themes together with Zac Goldsmith MP, Editor of The Ecologist, and Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy, politician and historian.
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You've seen the billboards for the movie 'Eat, Pray, Love' showing a pensive, questing Julia Roberts. The author of the book that inspired the film gave an exclusive talk in London for Intelligence Squared on 15th September 2010, in which interviewer Paul Holdengräber brought the intellectual side of Gilbert to the fore. Gilbert’s childhood evenings were peopled by eccentric, drunk, and competitively outrageous family members, who made Elizabeth Gilbert realise that when it comes to storytelling 'no one’s going to give you the floor...you have to earn it by telling the best story'. Gilbert recounts how she literally 'married' writing when she was a teenager in a ceremony in her bedroom, and also how, since the success of her globe-trotting memoir ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, she has become a more sedentary creature, like Candide nowhere more content than gardening at home in New Jersey. Gilbert and Holdengräber share a delighted reverence for Balzac, Calvino, Tom Waits, and their conversation turns into an unashamed worship of good writing.
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Posted in Politics, religion on Jul 5th, 2010 Comments
This debate took place at the Hay Festival on the 5th of June 2010. Arguing in favour of the motion are Johann Hari and David Aaronovitch. Arguing against the motion are Helena Kennedy and Phillipe Sands.
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