The notion and shape of 'the land' means many things to many people, as the contradictory responses to this 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel are showing. Simon Barrow looks at the relationship between rootedness and aspiration.

Gordon Brown's political appointees represent corporate influence and PR savvy, says Simon Barrow. But is all this smoothness good for the soul of politics?

Britain counts itself as a mature democracy. But what really guarantees freedom and fairness, asks Simon Barrow, and how does the church relate to the will of the people in wider society?

The current media-propelled debates about God are mostly hopelessly out of touch with their own intense fallibility, says Simon Barrow. He tries to explain why God-talk will always be helpfully elusive if it is faithful to what it seeks to point to.

The modern temptation is to dismiss resurrection as fantasy or reduce it to spiritualised sophistry, says Simon Barrow. The shape of the core Christian hope is both more substantial and more subtle than that.

In Christian and biblical terms, good citizenship is not about flag-waving, says Simon Barrow. It is about the good practices and ways of organising our public lives which enable people to belong to one another across nation state boundaries.

Free market ideologues have used Fairtrade Fortnight to attack what they regard as counter-productive do-gooding, says Simon Barrow. But what does freedom mean in economic terms, and is fairness something to be left wholly to markets?

The annual Channel 4 Political Awards offer an entertaining entree to the world of parliamentary politics, says Simon Barrow. But an award to a controversial lobby group raises questions about how politics is conducted - not least by Christians.

The natural presumption of Establishment insulates the Church of England, says Simon Barrow. Even worse, it takes the opposite direction to Jesus, who rejected worldly power in the Temptation that Christians recall during Lent.

Asking where the Church of England can go from here, Simon Barrow looks at why and how Rowan Williams got hold of the wrong end of the stick over religious communal practice and the civil legal system, why a larger 'multi-faith settlement' is unhelpful, and how post-Christendom beckons.

In a provocative short article in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Philip Blond argues that the dominant neo-liberal model of global economy is in crisis, and that both the political right and the political left have failed to understand the nature of the challenge this embodies.

Westminster easily gets mired in posturing and trading for influence, says Simon Barrow. But there are glimmers of redemption and genuine conviction in the political vocation too - even if we need to go well beyond politics to realise them.

Whether we love or hate Christmas, we know all about it. But the same may not be true of the coming of Jesus, says Simon Barrow. In Christ, God radically disrupts religious 'business as usual'.

Our parliamentary politics is about mediating different interests in a society of strangers, says Simon Barrow. But bioethical decisions confront us with the need to move beyond accommodation and confrontation to moral community.

The debate about religion in public life is often cantankerous, says Simon Barrow. But a constructive new pamphlet on secularism from the Humanist Philosophers' Group shows us that a better standard of discussion is possible.