This month, The Spectator becomes the first magazine in history to print 10,000 issues,

and we'd like to celebrate with you.

Subscribe to The Spectator for 12 weeks for just £12.

Plus, we'll send you a bottle of commemorative Spectator gin, absolutely free.

Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash celebrate.

Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

Unlock the Churches, read a headline last week in an online article in the Oldie, written by the magazine's editor, Harry Mount.

He wrote, at a time of the national crisis, if only there were some big, empty buildings where people could go and reflect in an atmosphere of beauty and calm. If only they were so big that you would automatically practice social distancing because there are so many chairs and so few people.

Oh, hang on. Like magic, these buildings do exist in every village, town and

city in the country. They're called churches, and yet both the Anglican and Catholic Church have,

in their wisdom, closed them down. Of course, it's understandable that they stopped services,

although such as the state of both churches in this country,

the lots of congregations were self-isolating through sparse attendance long before the virus struck.

But why not leave them open for people to wander into, to sit and if they want to pray?

An empty church is much less of a risk than, say, a supermarket or your own

front door when meeting a delivery man. Harry continued, there is nowhere better to consider

difficult times than in an empty church. Despite being an agnostic, I often find myself head in hands bent over in empty churches

in a position which, I'm sure, isn't coincidental, is just like praying.

Harry dropped around earlier to see me, and what you're about to hear is a conversation

carried on at a safe distance

with the tourvis in my sitting room shouting into a carefully disinfected iPhone.

I was walking past a Catholic church which has got to remain nameless because if I name it then

...