Comments by "" (@TheDavidlloydjones) on "Booknotes+ Podcast: Simon Sebag Montefiore, "The World"" video.

  1. "We need religiosity," he says. That's flat-out weird. Religiosity is one of the things all sane people, and particularly the soundly religious, should strive to avoid, imho. I think we may be stuck having to take some things on faith. I think we may try to create a foundational "faith" as best we can. But religiosity? The problem is that there are two very different definitions of the word, universes apart, and amusingly found in the different universes of Oxford and Cambridge. The Cambridge definition runs, "the quality of being very or too religious, or reminding you of religious behaviour, often in a way that is annoying: From his mother he inherited a fervent religiosity. She has a distaste for overt religiosity in public life." Oxford, however, gives the to my mind somewhat Victorian, at best Edwardian, definition, "Public and private religious practices, beliefs, and experiences all constitute components of religiosity. Scholars commonly use three central components to measure religiosity: institutional religious engagement, non-organizational religious activities, and expressive or subjective religiosity. Scholars use church attendance and participation in congregational activities to measure organizational religious engagement." Montefiore was a Harrow boy, so far so good, but Cambridge educated. Perhaps the musty carrels have tilted him Oxford's way.
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