Thoughts on Milbank’s Twenty-Five Theses on Empire

What follows are my brief reflections on the Philosopher John Milbank's Theses on Empire originally published on the Theopolis Website. I originally wrote these as notes for an online discussion I had with the authors of the blogs: Scripture and Cities and Fiat Lustitia. My responses in some places are fairly informal given the conversational …

Christian Humanism Is a Potent Idea

Just recently I read a really good, and interesting, piece by Mary Harrington over on Unherd entitled ‘Cultural Christianity an Empty Idea’. Which makes a convincing argument addressing the crisis of conservativism attempting to dress itself in Christian clothing in Europe. A big point in it is the fact that a good number of those …

The natural end of Post-Liberalism and its incompatibility with Integralism

I’m beginning to notice a growing movement to try and align or conflate Post-Liberalism with Roman Catholic Integralism. As someone who considers themselves a post-liberal, I find this extremely alarming. For the uninitiated, I’ll try and define both Post-Liberalism and Roman Catholic Integralism. I’ll then explain why I think this conflation is a really quite …

White-out? A response to Andrew Wilson

I am hesitant to write something on this topic because it’s an absolute minefield but I’m challenged to do so partly in response to a recent post by the Minister Andrew Wilson on why we should be abandoning self-identifying as White. The obvious issue with his appeal should be apparent from that last sentence, who …

Thoughts on Hazony’s “The Virtue of Nationalism”

I recently finished going through Yoram Hazony’s book “The Virtue of Nationalism” which I have come away from with really mixed thoughts. Some things resonated with me incredibly powerfully but there were other areas that left me somewhat concerned. What follows is an attempt to articulate what I imagine are both the good and the …

Whose children are these anyway? Thoughts on liberalism and schooling

In the news recently there’s been a story that has kept coming back to me about a conflict in a school between predominantly Muslim parents and an initiative promoting same-sex relationships. The initiative itself was introduced by the Assistant Headteacher, who is gay himself, at Parkfield school in Birmingham. One news report stated that as …

Word of the year ‘fake news’

Post Truth has been announced as the word of the year by the team behind the Oxford English Dictionary. Discussion around it mainly pertains to the idea that sentiments and emotions rather than ‘truth’ are now dictating the outcome of our political endeavours. This is often in reference to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton …

The Investigatory Powers Bill

There was a recent article circulated that sums up a troubling development in the UK. The Investigatory Powers Bill was recently passed into law legalising government behaviour in the UK that enables the government total invasive access into the online lives of everyone within its borders. The passing of this bill is troubling but what …

On President Donald Trump

I woke up on the morning of the 9th to find the WhatsApp group for my team at work exploding with news that Donald Trump looked like he was about to win the US election. The night before I had been talking it over with my wife, I knew he had a chance but I …

Meritocracy and Cosmopolitanism

Meritocracy is on the surface a thing that seems indisputably good. The idea that people should be appraised and awarded positions on competency alone seems obvious to us today. However this assertion, on closer inspection, belies the increasing narrowness that defines the competencies that we value as a society. The fact that these things we value are largely …