The Church Times Podcast

This week, Ed Thornton talks to the Rt Revd David Wilbourne about his biography of John Habgood, a former Archbishop of York, who died last year, aged 91. The book is called Just John: The authorized biography of John Habgood, Archbishop of York, 1983-1995 (SPCK), and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £16. In an obituary published in the Church Times, Rupert Shor...

On the podcast this week, Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Steve Morris about the important part played by Forces chaplains in the Second World War, and today. They include Captain Leslie Skinner, who Mr Morris writes about in this week’s Church Times, which marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day. “Skinner spent his time conducting funerals, digging graves, and praying with the dying and wounded,” he w...

On this week’s podcast, Emma Major, a licensed lay pioneer minister at St Nicolas’s, Earley, in Oxford diocese, offers advice on how the Church can better include disabled people. She reads from an article that she wrote, which is published on our website: Isolation and the Church: online and offline. She says: “Of course, in a few weeks’ time, the first phase of lockdown may be eased and most chu...

This week, Hannah Bacon talks about the research behind her book Feminist Theology and Contemporary Dieting Culture: Sin, salvation and women’s weight loss narratives (Bloomsbury). In a review of the book published in the Church Times, Jennie Hogan writes: “Susie Orbach’s 1978 seminal book Fat is a Feminist Issue broke taboos about women’s fleshy bodies. In Hannah Bacon’s engaging analysis of noti...

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 Fes...

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 Bank...

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 donat...

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 Li...

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 d...

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 w...

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...

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, amon...

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 gener...

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

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

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 metaphysica...

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 subj...

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 podca...

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 Ministr...

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...

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. Th...

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 o...

“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 Li...

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 sh...

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 Chris...