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Jonathan Wright

When Japan’s Christians rose up against the state
July 07, 2016
Book review: Christ’s Samurai by Jonathan Clements
When Japan’s Christians rose up against the state
July 07, 2016
Christ’s Samurai by Jonathan Clements Robinson, £14.99 In late 1637, rebellion erupted in the Amakusa Islands in south-western Japan and quickly spread to the nearby Shimabara Peninsula. Thousands of people were involved and there was bloodshed aplenty, but we simply can’t be sure of why the catastrophe unfolded. Was it a “mundane peasant uprising”, asks
The elegiac spirit of Betjeman lives on
June 30, 2016
Building Jerusalem by Kevin J Gardener Bloomsbury, £16.99 A Betjeman-esque melancholy pervades these pages: not surprising, perhaps, since the editor is a renowned Betjeman expert. In his introduction to the book, subtitled “Elegies on Parish Churches”, Kevin Gardner writes of a “loss of cultural identity” and of how we seek the “coherence of the past”
On TV, a good Catholic is hard to find
June 30, 2016
It’s been 15 years since President Josiah Bartlet stood in a deserted cathedral and railed against his creator. The flawed hero of The West Wing was mired in grief so he bellowed at the One he loved the most. He lit a cigarette, stubbed it out contemptuously on the church floor, and called God a
The land where the Jesuits embraced modernity
June 23, 2016
Book review: American Jesuits and the World by John T McGreevy
A jeremiad against ‘progressive’ values
June 23, 2016
Faith, Freedom and the Future by Michael Nazir-Ali Wilberforce Publications, £12.99 The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, does not shy away from bold pronouncements. On the issue of “designer babies” – deemed a “disaster for society” – he concludes that “we have had enough of children being the recipients of endless, fashionable social experimentation”.
The land where the Jesuits embraced modernity
June 23, 2016
American Jesuits and the World by John T McGreevy Princeton, £24.95 In a letter of 1850 the Swiss Jesuit John Bapst declared that “the United States is the freest country in the world”. Bapst had only arrived in America two years earlier but was already convinced that he could “establish here as many schools as
The missing greats of classical music
June 16, 2016
Sounds and Sweet Airs by Anna Beer Oneworld, £14.99 Fanny Hensel was expected to write a certain type of music. Her father, Abraham Mendelssohn, applauded the bright and breezy compositions but dismissed “the more ambitious work”. In the 19th century, writes Anna Beer, the “musical establishment … policed increasingly effectively the boundaries of masculine and
CS Lewis’s cosy Christianity
June 09, 2016
CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography by George Marsden Princeton, £18.95 A simple-sounding quest lies at the heart of CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity: the search for “the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times”. The word “mere” should not be confused with “merely”: it denotes “a standard of plain, central
A great writer but a troubling thinker
May 19, 2016
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essential Spiritual Writings Edited by Jon Sweeney Orbis, £15 There is much to admire, and a areat deal to mistrust, in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The prose often soars but the theology can be troubling. Talk of the divine potential within every human person and the relentless assault on tradition
When Catholics were ahead of the curve
May 12, 2016
The Catholic Enlightenment by Ulrich Lehner Oxford University, £20 The Enlightenment is not what it used to be. Hackneyed images of a few anti-clerical Frenchmen dominating the era’s intellectual life have been replaced by more nuanced historical portrayals. Central to this sea change is the realisation that Catholic thinkers made vital contributions to philosophy, science and
How the Civil War led to the Catholic ghetto
May 05, 2016
Excommunication from the Union by William B Kurtz Fordham Up, £23.99 Anti-Catholicism was staggeringly pervasive in 19th-century America. The faith was routinely denounced as antithetical to the supposedly progressive spirit of the Republic. Catholics were portrayed as blindly obedient to a papal tyrant, and otherwise level-headed commentators thought nothing of using terms like the “Whore
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