Letter from a Birmingham Jail

27/03/2013 | Reform

Fifty years ago this month, Martin Luther King led a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama. He was jailed, and criticised by white clergy. He wrote his classic response in the margins of a newspaper. This is an extract

I am … Read More

David Livingstone. Hero or failure?

20/02/2013 | Reform

Britain’s most famous missionary is 200 this month. Stephen Tomkins explores a newly-discovered story

It’s a baptismal service, and all around people are in tears – not from joy or because they are spiritually moved, but from anger and fear.

Their … Read More

On doing and being

20/02/2013 | Reform

Any of us can learn to enrich our lives by dispensing with shallow notions of success or failure in the pursuit of something greater, says Jennifer Kavanagh

Success and its frightening shadow, failure, are embedded in our culture. From birth … Read More

When chapels changed the world

20/02/2013 | Reform

What is it about nonconformists of the past that drove them to strive for a just society? Lesley Husselbee investigates

Picture a wealthy, Victorian middle-class cotton mill owner driving home in his carriage down Oxford Road, Manchester to his suburban … Read More

Atheist Church: Reviewed

20/02/2013 | Reform

The Sunday Assembly opened its doors in January, with hymns and collection, but no God. Simon Jenkins reports

I’ve often wondered what would happen if you took the religion out of a Sunday church service. What would be left? How … Read More

An act of love?

24/01/2013 | Reform

Gerontologist Professor Malcolm Johnson once opposed assisted dying, but came to believe that the terminally ill should be given a choice. With two new bills in favour of euthanasia due for debate in the UK and Scottish parliaments this year, … Read More