Religion

Religious fundamentalism – why is it growing and what is the alternative?

All religions have their fundamentalists; there are Christian fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, Buddhist fundamentalists and so on. They all play a reactionary role, and they are all growing in number. All of them believe they are the holders of the absolute truth, while all others are heretics or even the work of the devil himself. They are all used to sow division among toiling people around the world. The phenomenon affects all countries to one degree or another.

Book Review: Behind the Myths: the Foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

John Pickard’s book delves into the history of the three most important religions in the Western world, and this has profound political implications. If you think about it, religion dominates so many people’s lives from their birth to their death and yet, incredibly, so little is known about how religion, in particular Judaism, Christianity, and Islam really came about.

The Correctio – or how the West was won by the Catholic Church

The resignation of Pope Benedict and the global furore around the selection of Pope Francis, demonstrated the grip the Catholic Church still commands in the minds of the masses in many areas of the world. Cain O’Mahoney looks at the origins of Catholicism in the Dark Ages, and how the ‘Universal’ Church - unconsciously - acted as the ‘subjective factor’ in the transition from the slave based society of the Roman Empire to feudalism in Western Europe.