The Church Times Podcast

This week, we launch the Church Times Book Club Podcast, a new monthly series produced in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. This month, Sarah Meyrick talks to Susan Gray about a title she chose for this month’s Church Times Book Club: The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by the Australian writer Richard Flannagan (who also wrote The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which...

On the podcast this week, Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the think tank Theos, talks about how the science v. religion debate has developed since the New Atheist movement came to prominence more than 15 years ago. Nick is the co-author, along with Hannah Waite, of a new report 'Science and Religion: Moving away from the shallow end', produced by Theos and the Faraday Institute for Science and Reli...

On the podcast this week, Dr Mark Vernon interviews Professor Robin Dunbar about his new book, How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures. Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Anthropological Institute. How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures is published by Pelican at £22 (Church Times Bookshop £19.80)...

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams joined other faith leaders on a visit to Ukraine this week. Its purpose, he said, was “affirm our solidarity with victims of this appalling war, and express thanks for the courage shown by the Ukrainian people, in the hope that we can at least let them know that they are not forgotten”. During the visit, Lord Williams, along with other faith leader...

On the podcast this week, Sam Wells preaches a sermon on Psalm 23, which was given online this week at the Festival of Preaching event “Preaching in Perilous Times,” hosted by the Church Times and Canterbury Press. “It may not be much of a stretch to say the 23rd Psalm was composed for the Ukrainian experience of death, destruction, horror, and fear in the face of Russian invasion,” he says. “We h...

Cole Arthur Riley is a writer, liturgist, and poet, and the creator of Black Liturgies, “a project seeking to integrate concepts of dignity, lament, rage, justice, rest, and liberation with literature and spirituality”. On this week’s podcast, she talks about her debut book This Here Flesh: Spirituality, liberation and the stories that make us, which is a New York Times bestseller. An extract is p...

On the podcast this week, Professor Helen Bond and Professor Joan Taylor talk about their new book book, Women Remembered: Jesus’ female disciples. Inspired by their Channel 4 documentary Jesus’ Female Disciples, the book examines how a host of women — named and unnamed — have been remembered (or silenced) by posterity. It looks at the representation of these women in art, and how they have been r...

On this week’s podcast, Dr Leo Cheng, Consultant in Oral, Maxillofacial and Head & Neck Surgery at St Bartholomew’s, The Royal London and Homerton University Hospitals, talks about the work of Mercy Ships. For more than 20 years, he has volunteered during his holidays on board the Africa Mercy, performing life-saving and life-changing operations. Earlier this month, a new purpose-built ship, Globa...

On the podcast this week, Fr Luigi Gioia reflects on the theme of “Lent as the time of healing.” His talk was given at an online Lent Retreat last Saturday, hosted by the Church Times and the Church House Bookshop. Buy a recording of the entire event at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/lent-retreat. Fr Gioia is a freelance writer and speaker in theology and spirituality and Associate Priest of St Pau...

On the podcast this week, the Revd Mpho Tutu van Furth talks about her book Forgiveness and Reparation, The Healing Journey. The conversation with Catherine Fox was recorded at Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, which took place online on 19 February. The theme of the festival was Finding Hope. Buy a recording of the whole event at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/february-2022...

On the podcast this week, Hugh Williamson talks about the distinctive ministry of worker priests/Ministers in Secular Employment (MSEs), which are the subject of a cover feature that he has written for this week’s Church Times. Hugh’s father, Canon Tony Williamson, was an Anglican worker priest in a car factory in Oxford for 30 years (Obituary, 22 March 2019), so Hugh has long had an interest in t...

On the podcast this week, we revisit an episode from a year ago, in which the Anglican novelist Francis Spufford talks about and reads from his second novel, Light Perpetual (Faber and Faber), which is now available in paperback from the Church House Bookshop: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk It was recorded last year at a one-day online event organised by the Church Times Festival of Faith and Li...

The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, is interviewed on the podcast this week about a new Lent course that she has written, The Room Where it Happens, based on the smash-hit musical Hamilton. In a review of Lent books and resources in the Church Times, David Wilbourne writes: “In The Room Where it Happens, Rose Hudson-Wilkin comes to house groups, wherever they may be, watching the...

On the podcast this week, the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie, priest and writer, reads a profound and moving article he wrote for the 4 February edition of the Church Times. Titled “In the end is my beginning,” it’s about a funeral he conducted recently with unexpected and deeply personal resonances. He is the author of A Field Guide to the English Clergy (Books, 30 November 2018, Podcast, 7 December 2...

Cole Moreton has interviewed the famous, the infamous, and the extraordinary. He was named Interviewer of the Year in 2016 for his work in The Mail on Sunday, and was shortlisted for a fifth time in 2018. On the podcast this week, Cole reflects on the art of interviewing, and recalls memorable encounters with such people as Tiger Woods, Scarlett Johansson, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In a a forth...

Chris Mabey is interviewed on the podcast this week about the deepening political crisis in Myanmar, and the plight of Christians in the country. His book, Whispers of Hope: A family memoir of Myanmar, tells the story of how he came to understand the rich, nuanced history of Burma/Myanmar, through the family of his Burmes wife, April. He has also written on the crisis in Myanmar for this week’s Ch...

On the podcast this week, the Revd Katherine Price, Chaplain of Queen’s College, Oxford, talks about her experience of Slimming World, and how it prompted her to think differently about the quest for spiritual health. She also considers whether the Slimming World’s model has lessons for the Church of England’s mission. “At Slimming World, I’d realised that I actually did have the will power and th...

On the podcast this week, the Revd Andy March, Vicar of St Christopher’s, Coventry, talks about his debut book Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war, an extract from which is published in this week’s Church Times (7 January). The book tells the remarkable true story of Andy’s grandparents, Fred and Rike Clayton, who first met in Dresden at the start of the Nazi era. In a foreword to...

This week’s podcast returns to a Christmas interview from 2017, when Ed Thornton spoke to Paul Kerensa, the stand-up comic and comedy writer, about his book, Hark! The biography of Christmas (Lion Books) (Books, 24 November 2017). They also talked about comedy gigs in churches, comedy and evangelism, and whether preachers should tell jokes in sermons. Paul’s latest book, written with Ruth Valerio,...

“What could Shakespeare’s plays and poems teach me about the Christian faith and the God who loves me?” This is the question posed by Peter Graystone on this week’s podcast, as he reflects on the spiritual significance of a memorable scene in The Winter’s Tale. The talk was first given at an online Advent Retreat, on 27 November, hosted by the Church Times and Canterbury Press. It is introduced by...

On this week’s podcast, Dr Andrew Rumsey talks about his new book, English Grounds: A pastoral journal (SCM Press). The book is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £15.99, and extracts are published in this week’s Church Times (3 December). “It’s a book about places, the way that we shape them and they shape us,” he says in a short video about the book. “It’s a...

As the start of Advent approaches, this week's podcast returns to Malcolm Guite’s journey through “The Great O Antiphons”: seven prayers which the Church prayed during the first centuries, which called afresh for Christ to come. Malcolm reads each of the seven prayers and reflects on them, and offers his own poetic response to each one, taken from his collection Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonne...

On the podcast this week, a panel convened for a recent Church Times webinar answers two questions: Does the parish need saving? And what frustrates them about the current debate about the future of the parish? Watch the whole webinar — including the panel’s responses to viewers’ questions — at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/12-november/audio-video/video/does-the-parish-need-saving Th...

On the podcast this week, the Revd Stephen Hance, the C of E’s Lead on Evangelism and Discipleship, talks to Madeleine Davies about research that he has carried out about how the general public views the Church of England. The research is published in a Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us: Perceptions of the Church of England (MEv135), published by Grove Books at £3.95. Try 10 issues of the Church T...

On the podcast this week, we hear from the launch of the Green Church Showcase, which took place in Glasgow on Tuesday, during the COP26 climate summit. The speakers are the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher, who is the C of E’s lead bishop on the environment; Dr Ruth Valerio, director of advocacy and influencing at Tearfund; and Richard Black, senior associate at the Energy and Climate...