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I’m a devout agnostic. But, like Nick Cave, I hunger for meaning in our chaotic world | John Harris

The spiritual aridity of modern life can be tough to handle. Maybe that’s why the singer, and his new album Wild God, have struck a chord, says Guardian columnist John Harris

And in the midst of an unimaginable level of grief, Cave has not only poured his thoughts and feelings into his art, but repeatedly spoken about the profound personal changes caused by outwardly senseless bereavement, as well as reflecting deeply on other people’s experiences. The historian Tom Holland – who, like Cave, has returned to the Christianity he was brought up with – says that in the way millions of us interpret world events there is something unspoken: the fact that “at the heart of western culture is the image of someone being tortured to death by the greatest empire on the face of the Earth”. It happened again last week, when we spent 15 silent minutes in a disused chapel near the Somerset village of Holcombe, and I thought about an entry in the Red Hand Files that Cave posted in response to a fan’s bafflement that he has found at least some solace in Christianity.

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