On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Canon Rachel Mann about what has inspired and comforted her during the past month of self-isolation: art, literature, film, music, poetry, and prayer. At the end, she reads two poems from her most recent collection, A Kingdom of Love (Carcanet Press). Read Rachel’s reflections in the latest Lift Up Your Hearts, and watch her talk at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature here Canon Rachel Mann is Rector of St Nicholas’s, Burnage, and Visiti...
Apr 17, 2020•33 min
Foodbanks in the UK are experiencing unprecedented demand as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton speaks to Robin Ferris, the CEO and Founder of Bankuet, an online foodbank donation service. Bankuet enables people to donate to foodbanks without leaving their home, and to buy the items that foodbanks most need. Find out more at bankuet.co.uk Before founding Bankuet, Robin worked in the entertainment industry with companies including Universal Pictures, Island ...
Apr 09, 2020•14 min
Charities have launched emergency appeals for donations to help the most vulnerable, at home and abroad, during the coronavirus crisis. Much of the third sector have seen a significant drop in funds, just at the time when the people they help need them most. The Children’s Society has launched an appeal to raise funds to protect the vulnerable children and young people it works with. You can donate to it at www.childrenssociety.org.uk/lifeline. On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton speaks to the C...
Apr 03, 2020•21 min
Cole Moreton is a writer and broadcaster (and a former reporter and news editor of the Church Times). He has been named Interviewer of the Year for his work with the Mail on Sunday and his Radio 4 series The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away won Audio Moment of the Year, (a book of the same name was published in 2017. He lives near Beachy Head, the setting for his critically acclaimed debut novel The Light Keeper. In a review of the book published in the Church Times, Mark Oakley wrote: “Its themes ar...
Mar 26, 2020•50 min
At last month’s Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, Mark Oakley gave a talk titled “Music on the Wind”: The love poetry of George Herbert and RS Thomas. Canon Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and the Canon Theologian of Wakefield Cathedral. His book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (Canterbury Press) won the Michael Ramsey Prize in 2019. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks
Mar 19, 2020•47 min
For two decades, the writer Rhidian Brook has been a contributor to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day: the “God-slot” on the Today programme that is loved by some and criticised others. An extract of his new book, Godbothering: Thoughts, 2000-2020 (SPCK), is published in this week’s Church Times. At the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature last month, he spoke to Bishop John Pritchard about what it’s like being a Thought for the Day contributor: how he comes up with ideas, how to avoid bein...
Mar 12, 2020•37 min
Paul Edmondson, Head of Research at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, considers some of the different kinds of love which can be found across the Shakespearean canon. The talk is complemented by readings from Finbar Lynch and Catherine Cusack. It was recorded at the 2020 Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, which took place at Bloxham School, Oxfordshire, on 21 and 22 February. Read more about the festival in this week’s Church Times. Picture: Paul Edmondson (centre) with Finbar Linch ...
Mar 05, 2020•55 min
The former International Development Secretary Rory Stewart spoke at an event at St James’s Piccadilly, in London, on Monday, organised by Christian Aid. Mr Stewart, who is standing as an independent candidate to be mayor of London, was in conversation with the journalist Edward Stourton. Mr Stewart was asked about the Government’s record on international aid and Britain’s place in the world, among other things. Listen to an edited recording of the event on this week’s podcast. Picture credit: E...
Feb 27, 2020•51 min
This week, Ed Thornton catches up with Madeleine Davies and Adam Becket, who have just returned from the press gallery at the General Synod, which has been meeting in Church House, Westminster. They tell us what some of the stand-out debates have been, including the surprise commitment to setting a 2030 target for net zero carbon emissions; repentance for the racism expressed to the Windrush generation; and the latest on the Living in Love and Faith project. Picture: The Revd Andrew Moughtin-Mum...
Feb 13, 2020•12 min
This week, Ed Thornton talks to Paul Handley, who this month marks 25 years as editor of the Church Times. His first issue as editor was published on 10 February 1995. He reflects on how the Church and the newspaper has changed since then. If you don't yet subscribe to the Church Times, check out our new reader offer: 10 issues for £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader
Feb 06, 2020•20 min
This week, Madeleine Davies talks through the pastoral statement on civil partnerships by the House of Bishops, and the strong criticism that it provoked — including among the Bishops. Read the latest on this story at www.churchtimes.co.uk
Jan 31, 2020•14 min
This week, Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Alexander Faludy about George Orwell’s relationship with Christianity. Orwell died 70 years ago, on 21 January 1950, an avowed atheist. Faludy writes in this week’s Church Times, however, that Orwell had a complex relationship with faith intellectually and with Anglicanism institutionally. “Even as Orwell fought against Christianity, denying its metaphysical claims and finding it wanting in moral integrity, he had to acknowledge that the standards by whic...
Jan 24, 2020•14 min
This week, Ed Thornton talks to Dr Stephen Tomkins about his new book, The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s outlaws and the invention of freedom. This year is the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World. The Journey to the Mayflower is not a history of The Mayflower journey, however. “My book stops where most other books on the subject start,” Dr Tomkins says. “My story is about the illegal, underground church, the religious movem...
Jan 16, 2020•26 min
The Revd Peter Crumpler is a season-ticket holder at Brentford FC, a club that he has supported for more than half a century. He is also a Self-Supporting Minister in St Albans diocese and a former director of communications at Church House Westminster. In this week’s Church Times, he writes about some of the surprising lessons that that the Church can learn from football. And on this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton speaks to him to find out more. If you don't yet subscribe to the Church Times, chec...
Jan 10, 2020•21 min
On this week’s podcast, Madeleine Davies moderates a discussion between Andy Root and Nick Shepherd about faith and doubt in a secular age. In a wide-ranging discussion, they talk about issues such as attendance stats, the lack of children and young people in churches, what to make of religious experience, and how to minister in a secular age. Dr Andy Root is Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, and the author of Faith Formation in a Secular Age, published by Baker at £13....
Jan 02, 2020•56 min
The next Archbishop of York is to be the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, at present Bishop of Chelmsford, Downing Street announced on Tuesday. Bishop Cottrell spoke at a press conference at Church House on Tuesday morning and took questions from journalists, including the Church Times’s Madeleine Davies. This special edition of the podcast features highlights from that press conference. If you don't yet subscribe to the Church Times, check out our new reader offer: 10 issues for £10: www.churchtimes.c...
Dec 17, 2019•14 min
Should Christians be ambitious? Is church growth something to aim for, or does it risk giving church leaders performance anxiety? These are among the questions that the Bishop of Penrith, Dr Emma Ineson, tackles in her new book Ambition: What Jesus said about power, success and counting stuff, published by SPCK. On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Dr Ineson about these issues and more. The Church Times this week publishes a second extract from the book, which looks theologically at chur...
Dec 12, 2019•16 min
The Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail is admired and quoted by leading theologians. He has published 16 collections of poetry, and was awarded an Irish American Cultural Institute prize for poetry in 1982 and, in 1998, the Marten Toonder prize for Literature. The Five Quintets was published this year in the UK by Canterbury Press. It received the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s 2019 book of the year award. In a review published in August in the Church Times, Martyn Halsall writes: “In Th...
Dec 05, 2019•1 hr 6 min
“Richard Dawkins is the most outstanding missionary of atheism in Britain today”, Hugh Montefiore wrote in the Church Times in 2005. The next year, Dawkins’s The God Delusion was published. Now, Dawkins is taking aim at God again, with the publication of Outgrowing God: a Beginner’s Guide, which his publishers say is aimed at “a new generation”. Rupert Shortt is the Religion Editor at The Times Literary Supplement, and the author of books including God is No Thing (Hurst) and Does Religion Do Mo...
Nov 28, 2019•25 min
The Strategic Development Fund has so far allocated £136m of Church Commissioners money to projects that it is hoped will reverse the pattern of decline in church attendance. In a two-part series, Madeleine Davies has been tracking down what the money has been spent on and has asked how this corresponds with the church’s hopes. On the podcast this week, Madeleine talks to Ed Thornton about what she has discovered. f you don't yet subscribe to the Church Times, check out our new reader offer: 10 ...
Nov 22, 2019•20 min
Three years ago, a new digital team was created at Church House, having been given £2 million of “seed money” to spend over three years. The General Synod has approved £5 million for the next three years, to expand the digital work. What has been achieved so far and what are the plans for the next three years? Are dioceses and parishes benefiting? Can “likes” on social media replace embodied Christian community? This week, Ed Thornton puts these questions — and more — to Adrian Harris, the C of ...
Nov 14, 2019•28 min
The sudden fall of the Berlin Wall, on 9 November 1989, was an iconic and decisive moment that marked the end of the Cold War. It was, however, neither the first nor the last episode in the end of Communism in Eastern Europe. The Revd Alexander Faludy is an Anglican priest who holds dual British and Hungarian nationality, and lives in Budapest, where he is presently pursuing legal studies. Dr Anna Rowlands is the St Hilda Associate Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice in the Depa...
Nov 07, 2019•25 min
Theology Slam – the competition that seeks young voices on theology and the contemporary world – will return in 2020. The competition, which was launched last year, is organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press, the Community of St Anselm, and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). It is open to anyone aged 18 to 30, lay or ordained, and consists of a qualifying round and a live final. In the qualifying round, applicants are asked to write 500 words on one of 12 contemp...
Nov 01, 2019•17 min
This week, Madeleine Davies interviews Rachel Mann about her new book In the Bleak Midwinter: Advent and Christmas with Christina Rossetti. It is among a crop of books for advent reviewed in this Friday’s Church Times (25 October). In the Bleak Midwinter is published by Canterbury Press at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £11.70).
Oct 24, 2019•22 min
As the year 2000 beckoned, the Church of England decided that it would mark the Millennium by distributing thousands of yew trees across England. Every parish that requested one would get one. Twenty years after the distribution of 700 ‘Millennium Yews’, efforts are under way to track their upward progress. Ed Thornton talks to Madeleine Davies about the story, which you can also read about in this week’s paper. Plus, the Statistics for Mission 2018 report has just been published. Madeleine tell...
Oct 17, 2019•13 min
This week, Madeleine Davies talks to Dr James K. A. Smith about his new book On the Road with St Augustine, published by Baker Publishing at £11.99 (Church Times Bookshop £10). It offers the reader “an invitation to journey with an ancient African who will surprise you by the extent to which he knows you”. Smith’s contends that Augustine can make Christianity “plausible again for those who’ve been burned”. James K. A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michiga...
Oct 10, 2019•27 min
On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to the journalist and broadcaster Andrew Graystone about his new book Too Much Information? Ten essential questions for digital Christians, published by Canterbury Press. The book is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the special offer price of £10.39. Look out for a Comment article by Andrew in this Friday’s Church Times.
Oct 03, 2019•23 min
On this week’s podcast, the bestselling historian Tom Holland talks to Andrew Brown about Holland’s new book Dominion: The making of the Western mind. “This isn’t a history of Christianity,” Holland says. “It’s a history of what’s been revolutionary and transformative about Christianity: about how Christianity has transformed not just the West, but the entire world. “People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot thro...
Sep 26, 2019•59 min
Dave Walker is known and loved by Church Times readers for his weekly cartoons on church life. At Greenbelt last month, Dave spoke to the Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig — whose work appears regularly in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald — about the art, craft, and pain of cartooning. “A cartoonist is pushing boundaries or trying to assert freedom of speech,” Leunig says. “‘A cartoon in good taste is a contradiction in terms’, an editor once said to me. It’s the cartoonist who...
Sep 19, 2019•22 min
The second Festival of Preaching took place at Christ Church, Oxford this week, organised by the Church Times and Canterbury Press. Keynote talks by Paula Gooder and Mark Oakley can be viewed on our Facebook page here and here. Other talks will be available to purchase as audio files - keep an eye on festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk for an announcement, or the Festival’s Twitter account (@FofPreaching). And on this week’s Church Times Podcast, we bring you one of the talks from the Festival, by...
Sep 12, 2019•49 min
