Three poems by Jeremy Gadd

Symmachus the pagan appealed to the Emperor:
‘We look at the same stars; the sky belongs to all;
the same universe surrounds us.
Does one cannot arrive at so sublime a secret by only one road.’ Read on…

The Secular Conscience

I recently attended a talk by Austin Dacey, of New York’s Center For Inquiry. He has a Doctorate in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy. His book, The Secular Conscience – Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, was published in 2008 and has received wide attention. Dacey began with a Bible reading: the story of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham prepared to obey. Isaac was saved in the nick of time by an angel who said, “Never … Read on…

The Revelations of Joanna

The messiah’s mother was born in Devon, England, in April of 1750. What, you didn’t know? It was a strange day, featherstitched with endings and beginnings. Mobs stormed the French royals, Thomas Paine published The Rights of Man, Voltaire sewed seeds of doubt and sedition, and everywhere were new prophets and seers, feeding on spiritual anomie like the wild mushrooms of a wet, warm spring. In England was Joanna Southcott. A simple farmer’s daughter, former domestic servant and fairly bland … Read on…

A Message Revisited

Have you ever played the game called Telephone?  If you have, you know how garbled the message can get as it moves along.  When I was a child I was taught that God came to earth in the form of a man called Jesus in order to save us from our sins – that because of him we can go to a wonderful place called heaven when we die.  Since then I have come to believe that the message Jesus … Read on…

Logic in the Gospels

A first look at Christendom is like a first peek into a kaleidoscope, a snowflake, or a magic-mirror lantern.  In fact, the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001 edition, counts 33,830 Christian variants and sects, often divided on even the most basic tenets of belief.  More conservative counts suggest about 9000 groups1.  By contrast, Islam has about 20 sects or denominations, or maybe a few more, depending on how finely you tune your focus; Judaism perhaps 15; and Buddhism is in a … Read on…