Creative Studio

A Belief Without Burden My earlier essays explored why I no longer see Christianity as morally coherent and why, despite its claims to be a spiritual family, it repeatedly fails to generate the community it promises. But these questions, important as they are, rest upon a deeper one. Before we can ask whether Christianity is…

Before we learned to pray, we learned to kill in reverence. The sky was awash with deep violet hues as the sun, with practiced bravado, threatened its ascent from beneath the horizon. The boy lay awake under the widening heavens on the roof terrace of his family’s house, a single-room dwelling of mud and straw.…

When I was 13, a classmate revealed to me that his parents were German and that he had spent several years growing up in Germany. In my surprise at discovering his heritage, I jokingly exclaimed, “oh, so you’re a Nazi!” I had only been living in the UK for a few months at that point…