On 18 September this year, the seventh anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum, a staggering thirty-four unionist-loyalist Orange Order parades will take place in just one city — Glasgow; one of two Scottish cities that backed independence in 2014. This of course is no coincidence. The Orange Order, in typical fashion — and with the consent of Glasgow City Council, intends to put on a triumphalist show of force to celebrate the victory of Britishness over Scottish independence and remind independence supporters of their place in the union.
Orange Culture is Culture
Orangeism is a culture no matter how much we protest, but that is because we have gotten stuck on the idea of culture as a good thing; the social expression of the better angels of our nature. Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for the Bubonic plague, is a culture.
Going Back to the Shankill Road
By voting to leave the EU and by insisting that the people of Northern Ireland leave with “Britain” regardless of their needs and interests, London has shown its true contempt for its loyal citizens in Belfast.
Scotland: A Nation not a Race
England’s petty right-leaning Conservatives might want to shut themselves away in a museum of small-state nationalism – tilting at the windmills of national ius sanguinis purity – but this is all it is, a museum.
Why is Christianity Dying in Europe?
Follow @UrFhasaidh It’s no secret that Christianity in Europe is on the wane. By the 1970s and 80s church attendance across Europe, especially in Scandinavia, had sunk to critical levels. At the millennium it had become clear that the downward trajectory of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, had taken the religion well below sustainable numbers, making … Continue reading Why is Christianity Dying in Europe?
Antisemitism at Christmas
Adoration of God, as the Nativity account makes clear, has always been the prophetic action of the powerless on the peripheries – were not Mary and Joseph also “Jews?” Are we to assume that the shepherds in the surrounding Judean countryside were not Jews as well? This is absurd.
Religion is not the Cause of all War
ideas do not cause or fight wars – people do. It is true that religious people fight, but then so do music lovers. There is certainly no evidence to suggest that religious people are more likely to be combatants than Atheists, and neither is their evidence to suggest that religious ideas are any more likely to be a contributing factor in conflicts than non-religious ideas such as Capitalism, Socialism, or Democracy for example.
Making the Peace in Ireland Sacred
Had I known what I later came to know of this quiet saint then I would have asked him to explain peace to me, and I would have memorised and inwardly digested each of his words. All that I have come to know of peace is that it is never passive, and it never happens by accident.
