Religion

Juan Cole looks at the pacifist, prophetic and millenarian 'world religion' whose leader emerged from the social and political unrest of 19th-century Iran and whose followers have since been persecuted by shah and ayatollah alike.

Aram Bakshian on the historic tensions of Islam and secular nationalism

Pamela Tudor-Craig tours the cathedrals of the Kremlin.

Pious nobleman or calculating humbug - what is the true characterisation of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester? Simon Adams sifts the motives for the patronage given to some of Elizabeth's sternest religious critics by her favourite courtier.

The author of a 4000-year-old hymn to one God has been portrayed as a mad idealist who turned the civilisation of the pharaohs upside down. John Ray discusses the man and his myth.

Jonathan Clark probes the anti-Catholic actions and millenarian rhetoric of 18th-century America, challenging the assumption that 1776 was solely a product of secular and constitutional impulses.

Rowan Williams examines the career of the 2nd-century theologian whose powerful and idiosyncratic vision illuminates the tensions and development of the early Church.

Donald Weinstein examines the career and context of the extraordinary millenarian friar who held a puritanical sway over Renaissance Florence in the last decade of the fifteenth century.

Despite the later conflicts between Church and Revolution, Nigel Aston argues that the majority of France's churchmen in 1789 were keen for reform and eager for change.