St Augustine described the Holy Spirit as ‘the bond of love’. In anticipation of the great feast of Pentecost, Jane Williams will explore the Spirit’s loving action in our lives and world, while also exploring how we can understand the Spirit’s presence in places and times of damage, difficulty, and grief. Recorded 1 May 2016.
Life is at once wonderful and terrible, beautiful and appalling. It is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to faith for the believer and the non-believer alike. How can we live with this contradiction? And how can we believe in a just and loving God in the face of all the evils of the world? Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, and Loretta Minghella, the Chief Executive of Christian Aid, speak about the reality of suffering and evil in the world, and how in the face of it we can possibly l...
Holiness can sound like something lofty and abstract, beyond the reach of ordinary people. Judy Hirst says that in reality ‘holiness is about learning to entrust yourself to the God who loves you. It is about taking the risk of allowing God to interact with the truth of ourselves, no strings attached’. Recorded June 2016.
Mindfulness is the practice of living intentionally in the present moment. Brian Draper discusses the profound benefits of mindfulness and how much they have in common with the ancient treasures of contemplative Christian practice, and can lead to us to a renewed understanding of our faith and the ‘life more abundant’ that Christ calls us to. Recorded 6 November 2016.
Two activist-theologians, Canon Dr Angus Ritchie who is the Director of the Centre for Theology and Community and Dr Eve Poole who teaches at Ashridge Business School, offer a vision of what God’s kingdom of love might look like right here, right now and how our personal choices can bring its reality closer. Recorded 12 April 2016.
This shorter version contains just the talk with no introduction or Q&A. Martin Luther is undeniably one of the people who made the modern world. He risked his life to challenge the corruption and complacency of the late medieval church, and in doing so both changed the political face of Europe and liberated believers to pursue their faith based on scripture and conscience. On the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Peter Stanford exa...
Martin Luther is undeniably one of the people who made the modern world. He risked his life to challenge the corruption and complacency of the late medieval church, and in doing so both changed the political face of Europe and liberated believers to pursue their faith based on scripture and conscience. On the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Peter Stanford will examine this complex, often charismatic man of God, his legacy, and the myt...
John Pritchard calls Easter ‘the most astonishing day in the history of the world, shattering our closed minds and throwing open the windows of eternity’. But while we keep – or attempt to keep – Lent fastidiously, for many of us the fifty-day season of Easter is, curiously, harder to sustain. But he says that at the very ground of our being we are ‘an Easter people, and alleluia is our song’ and asks, what would it mean to let the glory of Easter illumine our everyday lives? Recorded 3 April 20...
Shami Chakrabarti, Craig Calhoun, Loretta Minghella and Conor Kehoe. How do we get politics and business working for the common good? Event organised by St Paul's Institute in partnership with Theos and Together for the Common Good. Speakers: Prof. Craig Calhoun - Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science Shami Chakrabarti - Director of Liberty Conor Kehoe - Director at McKinsey & Company Loretta Minghella - Chief Executive of Christian Aid Chaired by the Revd Canon An...
Each of us has a vocation: a particular calling from God to contribute our gifts to the world and to each other, and in doing so to live our lives to the full. It can be hard however to find our sense of calling in all the busyness of everyday life. Julia Mourant says that when it comes to finding our own path in life, paying attention to how God speaks to us through our imaginations, hopes, dreams, doubts and desires can be as essential as a logical list of pros and cons. Recorded Sept 2016.
Every Christian in every generation has to work out what it means to be a follower of the way of Christ in their particular culture; for us, that is our globalised, consumerist world. Ruth Valerio will reflect on the call to justice and wisdom, and how we can live both gently and joyfully on the planet and with each other in the 21st century. Recorded March 2016.
Julian of Norwich was a 14th century woman whose mystical experiences led her to believe in a God of unconditional love, of merciful compassion and honesty, and a radical belief in the goodness of creation and humanity, deeply challenging to medieval ideas of a God of wrath. Robert Fruehwirth explores faith’s consolations and challenges, using the wisdom and insight of Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love as a guide. Recorded 2 October 2016.
There is an Irish saying that it is in the shelter of each other than we live, but in our fragmented, urban societies it can be difficult to find, or offer, shelter to each other. Pádraig Ó Tuama draws on everyday stories, poetry, gospel reflections and Celtic spirituality to open up ways we can make our lives a place of welcome, both for ourselves and others, and live well together in a troubled world. Recorded 7 February 2016.
Etty Hillesum was a 27 year old Jewish student living under occupation in 1940s Amsterdam. Throughout that time she wrote a diary of her daily life recounting her spiritual transformation. Patrick Woodhouse will explore her life and writing including what her profound reflections on the nature of evil can teach us today. Recorded July 2016.
Katharine Jefferts Schori, by profession and passion both scientist and theologian, will look at the many meanings of the first chapters of Genesis, exploring what they can teach us about God, the world, and ourselves. Recorded 3 March 2016.
Although we tend to associate darkness with the absence of God, Advent is a season when we are called to contemplate the unseen workings of God in preparation for new life and new hope as we wait for the explosion of joy at the birth of Christ. Barbara Mosse explores the many gifts of God that can be found during this season, and also the wisdom to be found in the seasons of the church year as we begin them once again. Recorded 4 Dec 2016.
Drawing together the themes of the kingdom and the cross, the resurrection and ascension, Tom Wright presents a radical rereading of the gospels with radical implications for our lives – spiritually, politically and for the church as a whole. Tom Wright is Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, and was until recently the Bishop of Durham. Recorded October 2015.
Advent is the season when we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ at Christmas – a season for slowing down and reflecting on the great spiritual themes of light and dark, life and death. But while all around us the world speeds up in pre-Christmas rush, it can be difficult to find a place for stillness and contemplation. Malcolm Guite suggests one way is to read a poem each day and offers a seasonal reflection on this. Recorded in December 2015.
Music parallels and illuminates the experience of God in its changeability and fleetingness, and is one of the best ways we have to find the stillness in which a experience the sense of God’s presence. It can also provide a narrative for the cycle of life which allows our inexpressible feelings to be given voice at times of both sorrow and rejoicing. In reflection and conversation, renowned theologian Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP and award winning musician Andrew Carwood explore together what music c...
What kind of person do you want to be? It’s easy to go through life without ever really considering what we’re here for and who we want to be. How can we think not just about what we do with our lives, but who we’re becoming while living them? Steve Chalke, minister of Oasis Church Waterloo and the Founder of Oasis Trust, says that God calls each one of us to play our part in his plan for a just and loving world, and it’s finding our place in that story that will shape us and our lives into ever...
Barbara Brown Taylor says that in dark places and times it can be possible to begin to see the world and sense God’s presence around us in new ways - guiding us through things seen and unseen, teaching us to find our footing in times of uncertainty and doubt, and giving us strength and hope to face life’s challenges. American Episcopal priest, professor, author and theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor speaks about her new book 'Learning to Walk in the Dark'. Recorded in July 2015.
We all want to be blessed and to be a blessing to others, but we rarely stop to consider what that means. Familiar from every sort of liturgy, blessing is one of the most commonly used Christian terms, but one of the least understood. Andrew Davison suggests we begin to understand it through its place as a powerful theme running through the Bible, from the very beginning when God blesses Creation, to Jesus’s last act on earth, blessing the disciples as he ascends to heaven. Recorded in September...
Michael Hampel talks about detective novelist Dorothy Sayers and the enduring resonance of her controversial radio play about the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King, exploring her fascinating theology of creativity, which connects the doctrine of the Trinity with the process of creating, making and sharing new things.
The contemporary church seems riven with controversies, particularly about sexuality, celibacy, and the role of women. Drawing deeply on the Bible, the early Church Fathers and the writings of Freud and Jung, Sarah Coakley argues that desire can be freed from associations of promiscuity and disorder, and we can forge a new positive, ascetical vision, founded in the disciplines of prayer and attention. Recorded in November 2015.
How can we learn to live wisely? The renowned theologian David Ford draws deeply on a lifetime of faith and study to explore the ways of wisdom, focusing particularly on ‘the dramatic and mysterious’ Gospel of John. In this talk he will offer reflective and practical insights into living wisely and well, rooted in the Spirit, and drawing also on contemporary poetry and music. David Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
Dave Tomlinson's new book puts forward the modest proposal of ‘reinventing God’ - shaking up our settled ideas of what God is, and where we might find him or her. He writes ‘After a lifetime of seeking to know God better, the most important thing I have discovered is that we cannot find God. God was never lost. And we were never lost to God. God is everywhere, named or unnamed, recognised or unrecognised, bidden or unbidden’. Recorded July 2015.
Too often we think of Easter as just one day, but in reality it’s the fifty day season during which we explore the disciples’ experiences of the risen Christ and the meaning of the Resurrection. From Mary Magdalene meeting Christ at the tomb on Easter Sunday to his great commission to the apostles to make disciples of all nations, they meet, eat with, touch and talk with Christ, seeing his wounds and hearing his voice. Lent and Holy Week are seasons when we remember the past, but the time we liv...
Jesus enters into Jerusalem in triumph, and a week later he is dead. Holy Week is the great crisis of Christianity, which moves at terrifying speed from the crowds hailing him, to the Last Supper where he foretells his death, his anguished prayer in Gethsemane, and the shocking events of his betrayal, trial and execution. But it’s also true that these stories can become so familiar that we lose our sense of their revolutionary message about the nature of God. How can we make the great pilgrimage...
Lent is the slow season of reflection, repentance, inwardness and change, founded in Jesus’ forty days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness. It survives in popular culture as a time to ‘give something up’, but what is the deeper path of taking time to make this inward journey, readying ourselves to live through Jesus’ betrayal, trial and death, and encounter the transforming mystery of the Resurrection? Recorded Feb 2015.
Rowan Williams will explore the meanings of Christmas, the darkness and strangeness of the story at the beginning of our faith as well as its message of eternal joy and hope. He will also offer suggestions about how we might reclaim Christmas for our spiritual lives. Rowan Williams is the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was formerly both Archbishop of Canterbury and Professor of Theology at Oxford University. Recorded 8 December 2015.
