On Faith and Art – St George’s Church, 30 October 2018

The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca

You are never so much yourself
as when you lose yourself.

Lecture at St George’s Church,
Campden Hill, on 30 October 2018

I have brought you here under false pretences.  The title of this series is Exploring Faith Through the Arts. But what I intend to do is re-define Faith and re-define Art … and perhaps thereby (and by God’s grace) discern what is taking place between these two fundamental realities. I shall project for you no pictures (though I shall refer to some which are already familiar of have been made familiar by the valuable talks we have had so far). I shall be quoting passages from certain writers and from Scripture. But I don’t want to hang this talk on visual or verbal or aural samples of art from art’s vast panoply but, rather, keep upon the plane of ideas, of theological and philosophic perception. Continue reading “On Faith and Art – St George’s Church, 30 October 2018”

‘Old men ought to be explorers …’ – Wotton Society (Eton) 70th Anniversary Speech

Tom Stacey’s 88th birthday on January 11, 2018 was the date selected for the celebration at Eton College of the 70th anniversary of his foundation of Wotton’s Society (in the field of philosophy), with a dinner hosted by the Provost of Eton, the The Rt Hon Lord Waldegrave, at which Tom Stacey was guest-of-honour and gave the following speech without recourse to notes: Continue reading “‘Old men ought to be explorers …’ – Wotton Society (Eton) 70th Anniversary Speech”

Religion: The Ultimate Art Form – St George’s Church, 4 October 2016

Religion: The Ultimate Art Form

A lecture first delivered at St George’s Church,
Campden Hill, London, on 4 October 2016

Thank you for coming to listen to a talk on a theme, which on the face of it would have been enough some seven centuries ago to have the speaker bound at the stake ready for burning. When Father James heard of my flash of perception of  ‘religion – the ultimate art form’ from a member of his flock, a great friend of mine, he daringly invited me to be one the lecturers in the series Exploring Faith through Art. Thank you, Fr James. For my flash of perception was somewhat à côté. Continue reading “Religion: The Ultimate Art Form – St George’s Church, 4 October 2016”

Islam and Its Future – The Dying Dragon

© Tom Stacey 2015 The Probus Lecture ®

ISLAM AND ITS FUTURE
The Dying Dragon

It was a full year ago that I was invited to give this talk, and together we settled on its theme of ‘Islam and its Future’. We could hardly have guessed how intense the issue of Islam would grow to be. Islam, in its various manifestations: what will become of it, what will it do to us? Continue reading “Islam and Its Future – The Dying Dragon”