The Church Times Podcast

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 Ann...

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...

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).

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 thi...

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...

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.

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...

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 ca...

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 (@FofPrea...

The Festival of Preaching takes place at Christ Church, Oxford from Sunday 8 Sept to Tuesday 10 Sept. The Festival, organised by Church Times and Canterbury Press, aims to inspire, nurture and celebrate all who are called to proclaim the gospel today. Speakers include Brian McLaren, David Hoyle, Paula Gooder, and Mark Oakley. The Festival is sold out, but if you didn’t get a ticket, you can watch...

A new book by Dr Mark Vernon, a psychotherapist and former parish priest, suggests that “something is going wrong with Christianity”. A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the evolution of consciousness argues that “standard mystical theology” — the idea “that your life springs from God’s life and that this truth is yours to be discovered” — has been lost in the past 500 y...

The podcast continues its summer break this week, so we are giving you the chance to listen again (or perhaps for the first time) to an interview from our archives. This interview with Professor John Swinton was first run in 2017. Professor Swinton is the winner of the 2016 Michael Ramsey Prize. The winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize will be announced this weekend at the Greenbelt Festival. T...

The podcast continues its summer break this week, so we are giving you the chance to listen again (or perhaps for the first time) to an interview from our archives. This episode was originally posted in July 2018. Guy Stagg spent 10 months walking from Canterbury to Jerusalem, following medieval pilgrim paths across 5,500 km. He began the journey after several years of mental illness, hoping that...

The podcast is taking a summer break this week. But we're giving you the chance to listen again (or for the first time, if you missed it the first time round) to the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie in conversation with Tom Holland, about Fergus's book A Field Guide to the English Clergy (Oneworld). It was recorded at Hatchards bookshop, in central London, in November 2018. Fergus is a guest columnist in...

At Launde Abbey last month, Dame Hilary Mantel and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch reflected on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. They were speaking at an event to mark the 900th anniversary of Launde Abbey, which Cromwell was fond of visiting. Both hardly need introducing. Mantel is, of course, the author of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, published by Fourth Estate,...

At Launde Abbey last month, Dame Hilary Mantel and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch reflected on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. They were speaking at an event to mark the 900th anniversary of Launde Abbey, which Cromwell was fond of visiting. In part two, we hear the conversation between them, introduced and moderated by the Bishop of Brixworth, the Rt Revd John Holbroo...

Last month, Oxford University was given £150m by a US billionaire, Stephen A. Schwarzman, to study the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence. In the announcement, he warned that technology left unaffected would “trample over certain aspects of human behaviour and human opportunities”, before setting out the potential to “reaffirm western values” and “help the world adjust to changing tim...

Hattie Williams, senior reporter at the Church Times, has covered the proceedings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in the Anglican Church from the beginning. The final hearing ended on 12 July, and a report is due next summer. Hattie talks to Paul Handley, editor, about the experience, and what she thinks the Church can learn.

It’s time for the Church to start talking about race, says Ben Lindsay, a Pastor at Emmanuel Church, in south London and CEO and founder of Power the Fight, a charity that empowers communities to end youth violence. From the UK Church’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade to the whitewashing of Christianity throughout history, the Church has a lot to answer for when it comes to race relati...

The author and activist Shane Claiborne is the founder of The Simple Way in Philadelphia and President of Red Letter Christians. He was in the UK recently to launch the UK arm of Red Letter Christians, and to talk about his new book, Beating Guns: Hope for people who are weary of violence, co-written with Michael Martin (BrazosPress). Ed Thornton spoke to Shane about how Christians can respond cre...

Barbara Brown Taylor says that it wasn’t until she began digging into the faith of those who didn’t share hers, that she really began to understand her own. It was this journey towards meeting God in “so many new hats” that ignited her “holy envy” – the title of her new book, published in the UK by Canterbury Press. Barbara Brown Taylor sat down with Martin Wroe at the Church Times offices to talk...

The fashion for big history - books that no only survey the rise and fall of humans and their societies, but also try to discern some order from within the chaos - has grown a great deal in recent years. Names like Niall Ferguson, Yuval Noah Harari, Francis Fukuyama, and Peter Frankopan are widely known and respected. But, before them all, in the 1990s, Jared Diamond was publishing books that marr...

This week, Hattie Williams talks to the Bishop of Kensington, Dr Graham Tomlin, about his report, The Social Legacy of Grenfell: An agenda for change. 14 June marks the second anniversary of the Grenfell disaster. And Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Nicholas Mercer – a former Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, who campaigns with the charity Redress on behalf of survivors of torture. He is urgin...

“The Church has misunderstood Paul badly.” So Steve Chalke argues in his new book, The Lost Message of Paul, which will be published by SPCK on 20 June. “We have read Paul’s words through our own set of assumptions,” Steve says. “We need to go back to his worldview and see things the way he saw them.” Ed Thornton to Steve Chalke about the book at the offices of the charity he runs in central Londo...

“I am large, I contain multitudes”. So wrote Walt Whitman in his 1855 masterpice Song of Myself. The American poet’s 200th birthday is on Friday (31 May). In this week’s Church Times, Dr Michael Robertson, author of Worshipping Whalt: The Whitman disciples (Princeton Press), argues that while Whitman has been celebrated as a poet of democracy and of nature, among other things, his religious purpos...