English is a language that is saturated with Christian assumptions
Tom Holland, historian, Radical with Amol Rajan, Radio 4, 1 January
[My faith] calls me to centre the victims of crime. It calls me to centre the mother in my constituency who’s just lost her son to knife crime, waiting three, four years for a trial and victims falling away. . . And it’s for that reason that you reform
David Lammy, Justice Secretary, Sunday, Radio 4, 4 January
As for whether mass Christian conversion poses a genuine threat to Iran’s Islamic Republic, it’s certainly another pressure point along with sanctions, a collapsing economy and the rage of Iran’s women and liberal classes. However, given that Iran’s converts seem keener on spirituality than revolution, their effectiveness as a political destabilisation tool is — like so much else — in God’s hands
Charlotte Eagar, The Spectator, 3 January
Labour has resources to draw on, both in its history and current personnel, to confront the growing challenge of religious extremism. The question is whether it has the self-confidence to do so. If not, in a country clearly hungry to believe, there will not be a vacuum of faith but a clash between rivals, one that will wrench our politics in new and dangerous directions
Jon Cruddas, former Labour MP, The New Statesman, 3 January
If consciousness precedes matter, it’s a pretty good bet that it survives it. If consciousness seems at least partially independent of the brain, seems to move through the universe as its animating energy, one could almost have faith . . . that “we are safe”
Christian Wiman, Harper’s Magazine, December 2025
Ninety-five percent of physicists who won the Nobel Prize in the twentieth century believed in a god
ibid.
In an age that insists we must choose between science and spirituality, it’s a powerful reminder that the most profound thinkers often sensed something beyond what can be measured
Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, Facebook, 4 January
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