Since the 18th century, many Western intellectuals have predicted religion's imminent demise.

The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.

Europe is dying. That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

Parenthood involves massive sacrifice: money, attention, time and emotional energy.

As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.