The Church Times Podcast

On this week’s podcast, Christopher Totney, director of music at St John’s, Devizes, is interviewed about his new anthem, “God Of All Creation”, which was the winner of the Royal School of Church Music’s Music Sunday competition. He is interviewed by Stefan Putigny, the Royal School of Church Music’s Magazines Editor. A recording of the anthem, sung by St Martin's Voices, is played after the inter...

On the podcast this week, Cole Moreton talks to Gareth Higgins about his new book, How Not to Be Afraid: Seven ways to live when everything seems terrifying. Their conversation was recorded at the UK launch of the book, held online on Thursday evening. You can watch the whole event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMs0NEJH5mQ. In the book, Gareth explores the root causes of fear and shows how we...

On this week’s podcast, Claire Gilbert talks to Gareth Higgins about her book Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Letters on hope, death and learning to live (Hodder & Stoughton). It’s available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the reduced price of £14.99. After being diagnosed with myeloma, an incurable cancer of the blood, Claire Gilbert, who is the founder Director of the Westminster Abbey Ins...

On this week’s podcast, the Rt Revd Graham James, a former Bishop of Norwich, reflects on the faith of Prince Philip. Bishop James preached numerous times at Sandringham and was quizzed by the Duke of Edinburgh about the content of his sermons, as well as wider theological matters. “It was a questioning, searching faith,” Bishop James says. “There’s a sense in which his own restlessness, which was...

The regular podcast is on a break this week, so here is a chance to listen again, or for the first time, to an episode from our archive. It’s a talk by Brian McLaren called “Worship that destroys (and saves) the world”, which was recorded at the 2019 Church Times Festival of Preaching (Features, 20 September 2019). On Saturday 17 April, Brian McLaren will be speaking about his new book, Faith Afte...

On this week’s podcast, Vicky Walker talks to the actor Sir David Suchet, whose reading of the whole of St John’s Gospel will be broadcast online on Easter Day at 4 p.m. The reading was recorded in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey, and will be streamed at www.youtube.com/c/WestminsterAbbeyLondon/. “I want the listener to feel very comfortable. I want you to be sitting with me,” he says....

On this week’s podcast, John Pritchard considers how the experience of pilgrimage can enrich our everyday lives once we return home. This talk was recorded at the latest Church Times Festival of Pilgrimage, which took place online on Monday. The experience of pilgrimage, he hopes, “will permeate the rest of our lived experience. . . The essence of religion is actually about the presence of God in...

This week’s podcast features talks from the final of the Theology Slam 2021, which took place online on Thursday evening. The first talk is by Imogen Ball, a final year ordinand and MA student at Trinity College Bristol, speaking on “Creativity in a time of pandemic”. She is followed by Joshua House, a recent theology graduate from the University of Leeds who is now a trainee RE teacher, and who s...

On the podcast this week, Canon Mark Oakley talks about the books that have helped him through the pandemic so far. “Literature is more a verb than a noun; a living conversation,” he says. “Opening up the covers is opening up the door to a hospitable place, asking me to come in and take a seat. Literature makes thing matter. Literature, like faith, is a celebration of the meaning of experience and...

Announcing his Budget on Wednesday, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said that his measures would protect “the lowest-paid and most vulnerable”, who had been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. On the podcast this week, Ed Thornton talks to the director of Church Action for Tax Justice, Dr Justin Thacker, about whether the Budget lives up to Mr Sunak’s claims. Dr Thacker assesses whether the tax me...

This week, Rachel Mann is in conversation with Francis Spufford about his eagerly-anticipated second novel, Light Perpetual (Faber and Faber). It’s available from the Church Times Bookshop for the discounted price of £15.29. The conversation was recorded last Saturday at a one-day online event organised by the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Francis also answered questions from view...

On the podcast this week, Canon Mark Oakley talks to the director of St Mellitus College, the Revd Dr Hannah Steele, about her new book, Living His Story: Revealing the extraordinary love of God in ordinary ways (SPCK) (Books, 22 January). It is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book 2021. The book seeks to provide a fresh perspective on evangelism, pursuing Walter Brueggemann’s description of e...

Canon Rachel Mann has written a Lent course on an unlikely topic: Still Standing: a Lent Course based on the Elton John movie Rocketman (DLT) (Books, 22 January). It’s available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for £6.29. Ed Thornton caught up with Rachel this week to find out more about the course. “Rocketman is not about Elton John’s conversion to Christianity — I don’t know quite what he t...

On this week’s podcast, we bring you a talk given by the Revd Jarel Robinson-Brown, “Prophetic Rage: Fire shut in my bones.” The talk was given last Saturday at an online conference organised by SCM Press, “How to rage: Theology, activism and the Church.” We also publish an edited extract from the talk in this week’s Church Times. He says: “There is no such thing as a prophetic life which is conte...

This week’s podcast features a talk given by the Bishop of Worcester, Dr John Inge, at last week’s Church Times webinar on clergy well-being, “The Weight of This Calling: Clergy burnout, wellbeing, and resilience”. The talk is introduced by Church Times columnist Angela Tilby, who chaired the event. Bishop John was asked to speak on how bishops can help clergy to thrive. “I find the most helpful a...

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Simon Parke about his new book Gospel: Rumours of love. A work of historical fiction, it is narrated in the first-person through the eyes of Jesus (Yeshua), Mary Magdalene (Miriam), and Mary, the mother of Jesus. “I was interested in going and having a look at some of the gaps,” Simon says. “What was it like for Jesus to leave home?. . . What was it lik...

Recent events in the United States show that Western-style liberal democracies may not be as robust as we like to think, the Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, writes in a comment article in this week’s Church Times (15 January). The arrest last week of pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, and the attempt in 2019 by the British Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament, show that threats to demo...

Growing numbers of Christians say that they are “done with” attending church. What are their reasons for doing so, and what can churches learn from it? In Leaving Church: What can we learn from those who are done with church? (Grove Books), Robin Stockitt and S John Dawson tell the stories of those who have moved away from traditional forms of church, and consider what lessons the Church can draw....

This week, we have one of the podcast highlights of 2020: an interview with Madeleine Davies about her book Lights for the Path: a guide through grief, pain, and loss (SPCK). It’s available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop. At the end of the interview, Malcolm Guite reads his sonnet “Pilgrimage”. Read an extract from the Lights for the Path on the Church Times website. In a review of the book...

On this week’s podcast, Malcolm Guite takes us on a 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 Sonnets for the Christian year (Can...

Piranesi, the long-awaited second novel by Susanna Clarke, has been published to critical acclaim. Last month, it was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Book Awards. Clarke’s 2004 novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, has sold more than four million copies worldwide and been adapted into a BBC television series. After its publication, Clarke suffered from a debilitating illness which made it difficult...

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Hannah Malcolm about a new book that she has edited, Words for a Dying World: Stories of grief and courage from the global Church. “I wanted to help people to think about the ways that grief over the world isn’t about death in abstraction. . . The ways that we grieve the world will be particular to the places we come from and the things we’ve experience...

Seven years after marrying a Christian, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook’s husband decided that he didn’t believe anymore. On this week’s podcast, Vicky Walker interviews Stina about what happened next, and how a group of nuns helped her to navigate her own beliefs. Stina recounts her experiences in a new book, Blessed Are The Nones (IVP, £11.99 (Church Times Bookshop £10.79)). Read an extract, and an edited...

On this week’s podcast, Canon Mark Oakley speaks about how to preach when you haven’t got anything to say. This talk was given at the 2020 Church Times Festival of Preaching, which took place virtually in late September (News, 9 October). “A good sermon is not ultimately about information, but formation. It’s not a river of argument we have to follow to get to the end. It should be a fountain from...

On this week’s podcast, the editor of the Church Times, Paul Handley, talks to the Bishop of Coventry, Dr Christopher Cocksworth, about the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project, which he chaired. The LLF project was set up in 2017 by the House of Bishops in an attempt to break the deadlock over same-sex relationships. The committee behind the project has published what it calls “a suite of resou...