The Church Times Podcast (The Church Times)

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 of the experience of meaning.” This talks was originally given at a one-day online event organised last month by the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Buy access to a recording of the whole event here. Canon Mark Oakley is Dean of St John's College, Cambridge, and the author of The Splash of Words: Believing in poetry (Canterbury Press), which won the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize. Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader. Picture credit: KT Bruce

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 speaks on “Community in a time of pandemic”. The final talk is by Flo O’Taylor, a Phd student at Durham University, on “Justice in a time of pandemic”. Theology Slam is a competition to find engaging young voices who think theologically about the contemporary world. Its organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Read more about the final, and find out the winner, at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/ Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 the midst of everyday life. Not God in a box on the edge of our everyday lives, but God in the heart of it all, because that’s where discipleship is to be found — right at the heart of everything.” The Rt Revd John Pritchard is a former Bishop of Oxford and a popular writer of books such as The Life and Work of a Priest, Why go to Church?, and God Lost and Found. The full 2021 Festival of Pilgrimage event will be available to watch at https://pilgrimage.hymnsam.co.uk/ Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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. “And as I look into the camera, I’ll be looking at you. And I’m just reading to you. I may be speaking to what may amount to millions, but my tone is intimate, warm, friendly, not to push you away, but draw you in and just share it.” Sir David also talks in the interview about his conversion to Christianity and his journey of faith since. In 2015, Sir David, best-known for playing Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, recorded the first full-length audio version of the Bible, for the NIV Audio Bible App by Hodder & Stoughton (News, 1 January 2016). In 2017, he read the whole of St Mark’s Gospel aloud in the pulpit of St Paul’s Cathedral, to more than 2000 people (News, 7 April 2017). The video has received 2.4 million views online. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 After Doubt (Hodder & Stoughton), at a Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature one-day online event. Buy tickets at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/buy-tickets/ Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader. Picture credit: Copyright David Hartley

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 obvious throughout the whole of his life, was also applied to his religion. But that, I think, was why it meant a lot to him. He didn’t want a routine religion: he wanted one which challenged his mind as well as his spirit.” Bishop James writes about Prince Philip in this week’s Church Times, which also contains coverage of church leaders’ tributes, an obituary, and more. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader. Picture credit: Alamy

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 Institute, began writing to her siblings and a group of close friends about what she was going through. In a review of the book for the Church Times, Caroline Chartres writes: “This is not a book about dying, but, rather, a book about how facing death enables us truly to live.” Read the review and an extract from the book at www.churchtimes.co.uk This conversation was recorded on Saturday at an online event organised by the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, Finding Meaning. Other speakers at the event were the journalist and broadcaster Sarah Sands, talking about her book The Interior Silence; Gareth Higgins speaking about his book How Not to be Afraid; and Brian McLaren, who spoke about his latest book, Faith After Doubt. Buy access to a recording of the event at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/buy-tickets/ The conversation features occasional strong language. Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 can break its power through life-giving stories, simple spiritual exercises, and practical steps to take as individuals and communities. The book is available to buy at a 20-per-cent discount at the Church Times Bookshop. Dr Gareth Higgins is a speaker, storyteller, and activist, who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and now lives in the United States. He is editor of The Porch Magazine. Cole Moreton is a writer and broadcaster. His debut novel The Light Keeper (Books, 10 January 2020; Podcast, 27 March 2020) is out in paperback on 21 May. https://www.hownottobeafraid.com Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 interview. The world première of the anthem will be on the annual RSCM Music Sunday on 6 June, which celebrates the part played by music and musicians in church life. The podcast also features a talk by Prebendary Chris Thorpe, “Creating worship that connects: Liturgy as a tool of mission in reaching out”, which was given at the “Creativity out of Crisis” webinar last October, hosted by the Church Times and the RSCM. Prebendary Thorpe is the author of books which include Ploughshares and First Fruits: A year of festivals for the rural church (Canterbury Press) (Books, 1 January 2021) and Apprentices and Eyewitnesses: Creative liturgies for incarnational worship: Lent, Holy Week and Easter (Canterbury Press) (Books, 8 March 2019). The Church Times and the RSCM are hosting a webinar on Tuesday 18 May, “Lift Up Your Voices, Lift Up Your Hearts”, which will explore questions of music and worship. Subjects include how congregational singing could come back stronger after the pandemic, what next for choirs, and a training taster session for clergy who are not musicians. Speakers include the director of the RSCM, Hugh Morris; John Bell; Brenna Conin; and Gill Fourie. For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Helen Gheorghiu Gould, who is a member of the Interim Ministry Steering Group. She speaks about what interim ministry (IM) is, why it works for some parishes — such as those navigating change or seeking healing of conflict — and what the future might hold for it. Until March, Ms Gheorghiu Gould was interim-ministry adviser for Chelmsford diocese. She put together the Interim Ministry Resource Book to support and expand interim ministry in the Church of England (News, 9 April). Read more about IM and download the resource book at https://www.interimministry.org.uk/. Read a feature on Interim Ministry in this week’s Church Times (14 May). Find out about forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, the poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama reads some of his sonnets and considers its the way in which sonnets can offer “a new gaze, a new point of view”. The talk was given on Saturday at an online event, “Send My Roots Rain: A poetry retreat,” organised by the Church Times and Canterbury Press. Tickets for a recording of the whole event are available at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events “The whole idea is that a sonnet is a small meditation on something that’s twisting on itself, looking at itself again, offering, perhaps, a new gaze, a new point of view,” he says. “Sometimes saying ‘this’ instead of ‘that,’ other times saying “both of these,” troubling the idea of the singular. Sometimes a sonnet starts off by saying ‘This is true,’ and then there’s the turn, and, by the end, it’s saying ‘Yeah, but this is true, too.’” Pádraig Ó Tuama’s most recent book, written with Glenn Jordan, is Borders and Belonging (Canterbury Press) (Books, 7 May). He hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast: https://onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound/ www.padraigotuama.com Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader. Picture credit: David Hartley/Church Times

On this week’s podcast, we revisit an episode from January 2020, in which Ed Thornton spoke to Dr Stephen Tomkins about his book, The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s outlaws and the invention of freedom (Hodder & Stoughton). In a review of the book, published in the Church Times in September (Books, 4 September 2020), Sarah Mortimer wrote: “Tomkins’s vivid, fast-paced prose tells the story of the men and women who struggled against what they saw as the popish pollution still infecting the English Church. What they wanted was purity, but when this seemed impossible they began instead to demand freedom: the freedom to worship God correctly. . . “The story is told with verve and panache, and Tomkins has an excellent eye for the telling quote that captures the spirit of the protagonists.” The Journey to the Mayflower is available in paperback from the Church Times Bookshop for £12.99. Stephen Tomkins is the author of eight books on Christian history, including biographies of William Wilberforce and John Wesley. He is the editor of Reform magazine, and was previously deputy editor of Third Way. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Dr Sanjee Perera interviews Chine McDonald about her new book, God Is Not a White Man: And other revelations (Hodder & Stoughton). The book explores what it means to be black and a woman in majority white spaces where black women are silently exiting the church, no longer able to tolerate casual racism, colonialist narratives, and lack of urgency on issues of racial justice. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Most Revd Michael Curry, says of the book: “What sets Chine's message apart from other truth-tellers . . . is her willingness to share deeply from her own life, to tap into her own experience. This isn't a finger-pointing book from a position of moral self-righteousness. This is a heart-opening book from one child of God to her brothers, sisters, siblings in the family of God. . . In Chine's description of God's mosaic, and the hard, intentional work it takes to make it a reality, you can hear echoes of Dr King's words, ‘Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.’” The conversation was recorded at an online book launch on Thursday evening, organised by the Church House Bookshop. The book is on offer at the Church Times Bookshop for the price of £13.59. You can read an extract from the book in last week's Church Times (21 May). Chine McDonald is a writer, broadcaster, and head of public Engagement at Christian Aid. She writes a diary column for the Church Times. Dr Sanjee Perera is the Archbishops’ Adviser on Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns. Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Ed Thornton talks to Church Times columnist Paul Vallely about the cut to the international aid budget, which he describes in his column this week (11 June) as an “immoral and illegal act”. Paul explains the consequences of the cut for those in the developing world, and examines this week’s efforts in Parliament to reverse it, which culminated in an emergency Commons debate on Tuesday. He also offers his thoughts about the G7 summit, which begins tomorrow in Cornwall. “I am normally quite measured in my writing for the Church Times, but on this subject, if I sound very indignant, it’s because I am,” he says. “I think the Government has behaved particularly outrageously. The idea of taking the bread out of the mouths of starving people is just the real low point of the Boris Johnson Government.” Paul is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, and a writer, broadcaster, and consultant who specialises in philanthropy, business ethics, and international development. Paul’s latest book, Philanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg (Bloomsbury) (Books, 11 September 2020), is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop. Picture credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes about her new book How to Eat Bread: 21 nourishing ways to read the Bible (Hodder & Stoughton). It's available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the reduced price of £10.99. “I found that over the years, I’ve continually had people coming up to me quietly asking how they should read the Bible,” she says. “There are quite a lot of books at a fairly academic level, but really very little that bridges the gap between Bible-reading notes and academic books on theological hermeneutics. . . “I’m trying to bridge that gap with this book, to have something that you can give to anyone, whether they’re a new Christian or an experienced Christian, that helps them think about the Bible.” An extract from the book is published in this week’s Church Times (18 June), and it is reviewed by Canon Anthony Philips in our books pages. The Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is Team Rector of St Luke in the City, Liverpool. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On this week’s podcast, Mark Oakley explores the role of lament in the midst of a pandemic, and how the work of R. S. Thomas can help us to find a voice. His talk given last Saturday at the R. S. Thomas and ME Eldridge Society Festival, in association with the Church Times. The online festival brought together people with an appreciation of the literary and artistic works, musical compositions, people and places associated with R. S. Thomas and ME Eldridge. Purchase a ticket here to access a recording of the entire event. https://rsthomaspoetry.co.uk Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Picture credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Rowan Williams talks about his new book, Looking East in Winter: Contemporary thought and the Eastern Christian tradition (Bloomsbury Continuum) (Books, 25 June). It is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £16. Lord Williams is in conversation with the RC Bishop of Trondheim, in Norway, Dr Erik Varden OCSO, who is a former Abbot of Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire (Features, 14 September 2018). The conversation was recorded at an online book launch last week, hosted by the Church House Bookshop and Bloomsbury. In the book, a Bloomsbury press release says, Lord Williams “introduces us to some aspects and personalities of the Orthodox Christian world, from the desert contemplatives of the fourth century to philosophers, novelists and activists of the modern era. He shows how this rich and diverse world opens up new ways of thinking about spirit and body, prayer and action, worship and social transformation, which go beyond the polarisations that we take for granted.” An extract from the book is published in this week’s Church Times (2 July). Lord Williams is a former Archbishop of Canterbury, and was the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, until his retirement last year. His dozens of books include Candles in the Dark: Faith, hope and love in a time of pandemic (SPCK) (Books, 19 February); The Way of St Benedict (Bloomsbury) (Books, 13 March 2020); and On Augustine (Bloomsbury) (Books, 24 June 2016). Dr Varden’s books include The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance (Bloomsbury) (Books, 1 February 2019). Find out about other forthcoming Church Times online events at www.churchtimes.co.uk/events. Sign up to receive our email newsletter at churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

England are through to the final of the Euros, after beating Denmark 2-1, in extra time, during a tense and thrilling semi-final match at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday night. What is it about Gareth Southgate’s approach to leadership that is inspiring the players to perform, and what lessons might there be for the Church? What does the humility of England’s players show about the link between character and performance? And what are we to make of this generation of players’ championing of social-justice causes? To discuss all this, and more, Ed Thornton is joined on the podcast this week by the Revd Peter Crumpler, a priest in the diocese of St Albans, a former communications director at Church House, Westminster, and an avid football fan. He has written previously in the Church Times about the relationship between football and faith,, and spoken about it on this podcast. The book he mentions in the interview, Thank God for Football!, by Peter Lupson, is published by SPCK and is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop. Picture credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

THIS week, Ed Thornton is joined by Church Times cartoonist Dave Walker to talk about his new book on cycling: From A to B: A cartoon guide to getting around by bike (Bloomsbury). The book is on special offer at the Church Times Bookshop for £10.99. The book contains 100 full-page cartoons about the delights and challenges of cycling. The publisher describes it as a “cartoon manifesto for pedal-powered transport is a mixture of comedic insights and actually useful information, for everyone from beginners to seasoned cycling campaigners”. The broadcaster Jeremy Vine, who is a keen cyclist, has described Dave’s book as “Pure joy. Happy, generous, funny, kind, wise and full of fresh air. An absolutely wonderful book.” Dave also discusses on the podcast how more clergy and laypeople can be encouraged to cycle, especially to services. He has also written a feature about this for this week’s Church Times (16 July). https://cyclingcartoons.com https://cartoonchurch.com Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Ed Thornton is joined by Corin Pilling, UK director of Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, a charity that seeks to raise awareness of mental-health issues in the Church. Corin talks about how he has navigated the challenges of lockdown, and explains what Sanctuary is doing to help churches and communities. Sanctuary UK this week launched a new app that features the “Together Again” conversation game, which prompts people to talk about the challenges that they’ve experienced during the pandemic, the anxieties they feel about restrictions being lifted, and their hopes for the future. The app is available is available for free at the usual outlets, including the Apple and Google stores. The Sanctuary Course, meanwhile, is an eight-week small group resource that is designed to help a church explore the topic of mental health through the lenses of theology, psychology, and lived experience. Corin Pilling was previously deputy director of public engagement at Livability (Interview, 19 May 2017). https://www.sanctuarymentalhealth.org/uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

TODAY (30 July) is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. On the podcast this week, Ed Thornton talks to Esther Swaffield-Bray, Director of England at International Justice Mission UK (IJM), about the global campaign to end slavery and human trafficking. She talks about IJM works in partnership with police, local authorities, and churches in different countries to rescue victims of slavery and trafficking, bring perpetrators to justice, and provide long-term support to survivors. She also explains why the pandemic has made more people vulnerable to exploitation, and how churches in the UK can join the campaign to end slavery and trafficking. “We are hoping that this day will be used to spread awareness around the brutal realities of human trafficking today, particularly given the context of the pandemic which has made even more people vulnerable to trafficking,” Esther says. “This is fantastic opportunity to see a light shone on this problem. . . We also want to let people know that there is hope, and that change is possible.” https://www.ijmuk.org/ https://www.un.org/en/observances/end-human-trafficking-day Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

THIS week, Ed Thornton talks to Carolyn Skinner, Events Chaplain at Sports Chaplaincy UK, about how chaplains support Olympic athletes. At this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Covid restrictions mean that chaplains have been prevented from entering the Olympic Village. Carolyn explains how they have had to adapt to provide virtual pastoral support (News, 23 July). Carolyn also considers the growing awareness of mental health among athletes, which has been highlighted by the American gymnast Simone Biles’s withdrawal from some events in Tokyo (Leader comment, 30 July). Carolyn has been an Events Chaplain with Sports Chaplaincy UK since 2007, and served as a chaplain at Royal Ascot in 2007, the 2010 Winter Paralympics, the 2010 Women’s Rugby World Cup, the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics 2012, and the 2014 Commonwealth Games. She also runs “Love All, Serve All,” an annual outreach project at the Wimbledon tennis queues, as well as being a chaplain at her local gym. Carolyn has been Pastoral Support Lead for Gyms since 2016, which is a rapidly growing area for Sports Chaplaincy UK. https://sportschaplaincy.org.uk/ Picture: Team GB’s Kelly competes in the second semi final of the Women's 800 metres at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, on Saturday. She went on to win the silver medal Credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week’s podcast provides a chance to listen again, or perhaps for the first time, to an interview with Ysenda Maxtone Graham, which was first posted in July last year. She talks about her book British Summer Time Begins: The school summer holidays 1930-1980 (Little, Brown), which is now available in paperback from the Church Times Bookshop for £9.99. She also talks about holidays and churchgoing, which she wrote about last year for the Church Times (Features, 17 July 2020); Christian house-swaps and clergy holidays; and how the school summer-holiday experience has changed. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Mark Nam, the founder of the Tea House, a new national network of C of E clergy of Chinese heritage. As the Tea House was launched on Monday, he said that its aim was “to support and empower clergy with Chinese-heritage in the Church of England by promoting their presence in all structures of the Church, creating connections and providing information and resources”. On the podcast, he talks more about the aims of the Tea House and the need for the Church of England and wider society to tackle the racism experienced by people of East Asian heritage, which has risen significantly since the start of the pandemic. The Revd Mark Nam is Assistant Curate of St Anne’s, Oldland, and All Saints’, Longwell Green, in south-east Bristol, and the diocese of Bristol’s Minority Ethnic Vocations Champion. https://theteahouse.org/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to the writer — and General Synod member — James Cary about his new book The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer (SPCK). An extract from the book is published in this week’s Church Times (27 August), and the book is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop. “The first thing you notice when you hear scripture read out loud really well by an actor, the first thing you notice is that it’s actually funny – not everywhere, but it’s usually surprising,” he says. “And if you hear large portions of it read, there will be lots of jokes, and there will be lots of what we would call in sitcoms ‘callbacks’, and moments where it’s like, ‘Ah, suddenly this is becoming clear’. “The book is an attempt to draw out here’s how it’s funny, here’s reading between the lines, here’s some stuff that isn’t in the Bible, but might have been running through their minds as they’re experiencing this in real time during Jesus’s earthly ministry, but also in the minds of the listeners as they are hearing it and their minds are thinking possibly what might happen next.” James’s writing credits include the BBC TV sitcoms Miranda and Bluestone 42 (Features, 1 March 2013), and the radio sitcoms Think the Unthinkable and Hut 33. His previous books include The Sacred Art of Joking (Books, 18 January 2019) and Death by Civilisation (Books, 23 August 2013); his plays include A Turbulent Priest (Arts, 26 April 2019), A Monk’s Tale (Features, 18 August 2017), and The God Particle. At the end of the interview, you can hear James reading from the book. The recording was originally posted on James’s YouTube channel, and is used with his kind permission. https://www.jamescary.co.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On this week’s podcast, there’s a chance to listen again (or, perhaps, for the first time) to Sarah Lothian’s interview with Susanna Clarke about her long-awaited second novel, Piranesi. The book has just been published in paperback and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.09. Dr Jane Williams, the McDonald Professor in Christian Theology at St Mellitus College, chose Piranesi as her favourite book of 2020 (Books, 27 November 2020). “Piranesi looks with loving attention at the world in which he finds himself, caring for everything that he encounters, and receiving everything as loving gift,” Dr Williams said. “Other forces see it very differently. The book is deeply satisfying, with a depth of sadness — or is it joy?” Picture credit: Sarah Lee The next Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature takes place on Saturday 25 September. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On this week’s podcast, Dr Mark Vernon talks about his new book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A guide for the spiritual journey (Angelico Press)(Church Times Bookshop £16.20). This year marks 700 years since Dante’s death, and this week’s Church Times (10 September) includes features by Robin Ward and Alexander Faludy, as well as several reviews of books published to mark the anniversary. In a review of Dr Vernon’s book, Jonathan Boardman describes it as a “detailed and immensely thoughtful commentary. . . His personal experience as a psychotherapist and student of philosophy, polished further with physics, theology, and ordination, opens . . . a very special reflective door into Dante’s thinking and expression: its dreamlike design is peppered constantly with personal experience and knowledge.” Read a preview of the introduction to the book at https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book Dr Vernon’s books include A Secret History of Christianity (Christian Alternative) (Books, 20 December 2019) and The Idler Guide to Ancient Philosophy (Idler Books). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Madeleine Davies interviews the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has recently returned from sabbatical. They spoke in his study in Lambeth Palace about a range of topics, including: what he did during his sabbatical; his time spent volunteering as a hospital chaplain during the pandemic; the future of the parish (“There is no conspiracy to abolish the parish”); church-plants; clergy morale; and the ministry of the C of E in a secular society. Archbishop Welby says: “I think I would want to say to clergy . . . and to laity: We can only do what God enables us to do, and the rest is his problem. So, if you can’t do things, don’t be guilty. . . Keep a sane home life, and keep up with your friends, and do what you can, having done that, and spend time with God in prayer. “If that means we end up as a faithful remnant, so be it. But my bet is, if we do go for simpler, humbler, and so on, if we do what God resources us to do, if we don’t exhaust ourselves, and if we get rid of guilt — and I am the champion of self-imposed guilt — the Church God will grow.” Read a write up of the interview in this week's Church Times (17 September). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, the Revd Jarel Robinson-Brown talks about his book, "Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer: The Church and the famine of grace." It’s published by SCM Press and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £15.99. He is in conversation with the Revd Winnie Varghese, who is the Rector of St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Atlanta. It was recorded at an online book launch this week, which was introduced by David Shervington, the senior commissioning editor at SCM Press. In a review of the book for the Church Times (Books, 3 September), the Revd Brunel James writes: “This book is a must-read and deserves to be a bestseller. There is a battle going on for the soul of the Church, and Jarel Robinson-Brown’s new book makes a courageous contribution to the discussion. It really should be compulsory reading for any church leader who has never thought through how we privilege the White and the heterosexual in our church life, and what this means for those among us who are Black and LGBTQ+.” The Revd Jarel Robinson-Brown is Assistant Curate of St Botolph without Aldgate, in London. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On this week’s podcast, Lucy Winkett talks about her new book Reading the Bible with your Feet (Canterbury Press): a collection of her sermons from recent years, some of which were preached during the pandemic. She is in conversation with Chine McDonald, a writer, broadcaster, and head of public engagement at Christian Aid. It was recorded at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature last weekend. The book is available from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £13.49. https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781786223302/reading-the-bible-with-your-feet “Walking through scripture is . . . what I’m trying to encourage us all to do,” she says. “And to say we all have a preaching ministry . . . and that can be in a conversation, because conversation is revolutionary in scripture — it can be in conversation as much as it is standing up at the front.” During the interview, she also talks about how training for ordination in an ecumenical context has influenced her preaching, how she prepares sermons, the privilege of being a White preacher in a White-majority context, and what she learnt while preaching and leading a church during the pandemic. The Revd Lucy Winkett is Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, in the diocese of London. Also at the Festival of Faith and Literature, Chine McDonald spoke to the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams about her most recent book, God Is Not a White Man: And other revelations (Hodder & Stoughton) (Features 21 May, Podcast, 28 May, Books, 11 June). Access to a recording of the whole event can be purchased at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/september-2021/ Picture credit: National Churches Trust/Creative Commons Find out about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Ed Thornton talks to Andrew Graystone about his book Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the cult of Iwerne camps (DLT (Books, 1 October). The book is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for £11.69. “I've drawn on a very wide range of sources to produce really quite a detailed account of what has happened,” Andrew says. “But I've tried to weave it together into a narrative that makes sense and is more than just a life of John Smyth. “The intention is that it should also serve the Church as a bit of a study in how spiritual abuse can happen. So, I hope that people who read the book will not just be horrified, although they will be horrified, by the ways that this man treated young men and children. But I hope they will also reflect on the ways that cultures within the Church sometimes enable abuse to happen.” Andrew Graystone is a writer, theologian, and activist. His previous books include Faith, Hope and Mischief: Tiny acts of rebellion by an everyday activist (Canterbury Press) (Podcast, 28 August 2020) and Too Much Information? Ten essential questions for digital Christians (Canterbury Press) (Podcast, 4 October 2019). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Peter Stanford returns to the podcast this week to talk about his new book, If These Stones Could Talk: The history of Christianity in Britain and Ireland through Twenty Buildings (Hodder & Stoughton). It’s available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £16. A press release from Hodder says of the book: “In exploring the stories of these buildings that are still so much a part of the landscape, the details of their design, the treasured objects that are housed within them, the people who once stood in their pulpits and those who sat in their pews, he builds century by century the narrative of what Christianity has meant to the nations of the British Isles, how it is reflected in the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the sense it gives about who we are and how we live with each other.” Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, Joe Ware, senior climate journalist at Christian Aid, is on the podcast to talk about the UN climate-change conference COP26, which starts in Glasgow at the end of this month. He has written a preview of COP26 for this week’s issue of the Church Times (22 October), as part of a series of features on the climate crisis. He has also written an in-depth report in our news section on how climate campaigners of faith have been building pressure for change in advance of COP26. On the podcast, Joe expands on the themes of his articles, explaining the scale of the challenge, the part played by geo-politics in climate negotiations, and what campaigners think that COP26’s priorities should be. Picture credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

THE COP26 climate-change conference begins in Glasgow, on Sunday (31 October). So this seemed like a good time to revisit a special podcast that we posted a year ago: Everybody Now, a podcast about what it means to be human on the threshold of a global climate emergency, in a time of systemic injustice and runaway pandemics. Scientists, activists, farmers, poets, and theologians talk bravely and frankly about how our biosphere is changing, about grief and hope in an age of social collapse and mass extinction, and about taking action against all the odds. On 19 October 2020, Everybody Now was released by podcasters all over the world as a collective call for awareness, grief, and loving action. With contributions from: Dr Gail Bradbrook, scientist and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Professor Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester Dámaris Albuquerque, works with agricultural communities in Nicaragua The Rt Revd Dr Rowan Williams, theologian and poet, and a former Archbishop of Canterbury Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet, theologian, and conflict mediator Rachel Mander, environmental activist with Hope for the Future John Swales, priest and activist, and part of a community for marginalised people Zena Kazeme, Persian-Iraqi poet who draws on her experiences as a former refugee to create poetry that explores themes of exile, home, war, and heritage Flo Brady, singer and theatre maker Hannah Malcolm, Anglican ordinand, climate writer, and organiser Alastair McIntosh, writer, academic, and land rights activist David Benjamin Blower, musician, poet, and podcaster Funding and Production: This podcast was crowdfunded by a handful of good souls, and produced by Tim Nash and David Benjamin Blower (www.nomadpodcast.co.uk). Permissions: The song Happily by Flo Brady is used with permission. The song The Soil, from We Really Existed and We Really Did This by David Benjamin Blower, used with permission. The Poem The Tree of Knowledge by Pádraig Ó Tuama used with permission. The Poem Atlas by Zena Kazeme used with permission. The Poem What is Man? by Rowan Williams from the book The Other Mountain, used with permission from Carcanet Press. The Church Times Podcast will return next week (5 November).

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 Intelligence Unit. The Showcase, a joint production by the Church of England’s environment programme and the Church Times, highlights seven projects from different denominations (watch a video about them on our website). Read more about the Green Church Showcase in this Friday’s Church Times (5 November). Picture credit: Albin Hillert Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 The panel: The Bishop of Ramsbury, Dr Andrew Rumsey, author of Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place (SCM, 2017) (Books, 21 July 2017). The diocesan secretary of Bangor, the Revd Siôn Rhys Evans. The Rural Dean of Haverstoe, and Rector of The Waltham Group, in the diocese of Lincoln, the Revd Kimberly Bohan. The Rector of The Ascension, Hulme, the Revd Azariah France-Williams, author of Ghost Ship: Institutional racism and the Church of England (SCM Press) (Podcast, 25 September 2020). Canon Angela Tilby, Canon-of-Honour at Portsmouth Cathedral, member of the Save the Parish network steering committee, and Church Times columnist It is chaired by Madeleine Davies, Senior Writer, Church Times. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Sonnets for the Christian year (Canterbury Press). This talk was first broadcast last November during an online Advent retreat, hosted by the Church Times and Canterbury Press. The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. His books include Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder), Love Remember: 40 poems of loss, lament and hope (Canterbury Press), and David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms (Canterbury Press). Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 about memory and belonging and heritage, Christian heritage especially, and the way in which the Church has shaped the nation’s story for good and ill over many centuries, and my hope that the Christian narrative can yet help us to tell a more hopeful story about England’s future.” At the end of the podcast, he reads an extract from the book and plays a song, “Silbury Hill,” which he wrote to accompany the launch of the book. Dr Rumsey is the Bishop of Ramsbury in Salisbury diocese, and the co-lead bishop for church buildings and cathedrals. His previous book is Parish: An Anglican theology of place (Features, 2 June 2017, Books, 21 July 2017). Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Picture credit: KT BRUCE Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

“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 Christine Smith, Publishing Director of Hymns Ancient & Modern. To access a recording of the whole event, book a ticket at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/advent-retreat Peter’s latest book, All’s Well that Ends Well: From dust to resurrection: 40 days with Shakespeare, is published by Canterbury Press and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £11.69. Peter is a writer who has worked for Scripture Union, Christian Aid, and the Church Army. He is the Church Times’s theatre critic, and a contributor to Reflections for Daily Prayer. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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, is Planet Protectors: 52 ways to look after God’s world (SPCK) (Features, 22 October). His other books include Noah’s Car Park Ark (SPCK) (Books, 22 June 2018) and So a Comedian Walks Into a Church . . . Confessions of a kneel-down stand-up (DLT) (Books, 12 July 2013). Paul hosts the podcast British Broadcasting Century, and more information about his work, including upcoming gigs, is available at paulkerensa.com. Paul has also written for the BBC sitcom Not Going Out, some CBBC shows, and some pre-school animations for churches out next year. Treat friends and family to a gift subscription this year. We’ll send a Christmas card announcing your gift - and your choice of one of two free books! https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/christmas

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 the book, the Bishop of Coventry, Dr Christopher Cocksworth, writes: “It is my hope that, thanks to Andy’s efforts, the story will inspire you as much as it has inspired me, and that it will find its place as a signpost, even a landmark, along the path of reconciliation, trust and love which links Coventry and Dresden; Britain and Germany.” The book is published by Halwill Publishing and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. Signed copies can also be purchased at https://halwillpublishing.co.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 the discipline to make changes in my life that had a tangible difference,” she says. “But I was thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, I wasn’t even massively motivated to lose weight; it wasn’t my number one priority. My prayer life, which is a much bigger priority for me, why don’t I have that discipline there?’. . . “And I was wondering why is it that this really quite simple group, the Slimming World group, was enabling me to make the changes that I wanted to make in my life to lose weight; and the Church, for whatever reason, that surely should be exactly the group which is enabling me to make changes in my spiritual life, and somehow that wasn’t happening for me. And that just raised that question for me, I think.” Katherine has also written an article for this week’s Church Times. Picture credit: David Olds Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Church Times (21 January). Chris Mabey is a chartered psychologist and Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University Business School. Whispers of Hope is published by Penguin Random House at £29.99 (Church Times Bookshop £26.99); 9-7898-1-495425-9. https://www.chrismabey.co.uk/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 forthcoming new podcast, “Can we talk?”, which launches on 8 February (produced by Hodder Faith), he reflects in each episode on a single encounter, and reflects on what such encounters have taught him about the incredible lives we live as human beings and the lessons we can learn from connecting with each other. In this week’s Church Times (28 January), we publish an edited transcript of the episode in which he describes an unforgettable encounter with Dr Tutu. His debut novel, The Light Keeper, was published in 2019 and is out now in paperback (Books, 10 January 2020; Podcast, 27 March 2020). https://shows.acast.com/cole-moretons-can-we-talk https://colemoreton.com Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 2018) and Priests de la Résistance! The loose canons who fought fascism in the twentieth century (Books, 8 November 2019, Features, 15 November 2019). Both are published by Oneworld Publications and are available to order from the Church Times Bookshop (here and here). Follow him on Twitter: @_F_B_G_ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 smash-hit musical Hamilton with them, and introducing staid Anglicans to hip-hop. She parallels her own immigrant experience with Alexander Hamilton’s, blisteringly honest about her humble origins, the ensuing hurts, and the dreams that fired her. . . “In 22 years of parish ministry, I ran many Lent house groups, and, as a bishop, I addressed larger Lent gatherings. I sense that this course will work brilliantly.” The Room Where it Happens is published by Darton, Longman & Todd, and is on offer at the Church Times Bookshop. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Literature. Since it was published last year, the book made the long list for the Booker Prize (News, 30 July 2021). Francis Spufford’s first novel, Golden Hill (Reading Groups, 3 March 2017), won the Costa First Novel Award 2016. He has also written five highly praised works of non-fiction, including Unapologetic: Why, despite everything Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense (Books, 4 October 2013; Features, 7 September 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2016 Michael Ramsey Prize. The next Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature takes place online on Saturday (19 February). Find out more and book tickets at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/february-2022 Photo credit: Eamonn McCabe/Popperfoto Music for the podcast is by Twisterium

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 this ministry. In his feature this week, he talks to a priest who is a full-time hairdresser, another who, until recently, was a checkout worker at a supermarket, a priest who is a carer, and another who works in a café. “Talking to them, and others like them, reveals a refreshing approach to faith, focused on how we express and support faith in everyday settings, not only in church buildings,” he writes. “And it challenges the Church to reflect on what ministry means.” https://www.hughwilliamson.org/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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/ Forgiveness and Reparation, in the My Theology series published by Darton, Longman & Todd, is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop. Read an extract here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/11-february/features/features/forgiveness-and-reparation-dance-begins-with-love Mpho Tutu van Furth is a South African pastor, author, artist, and activist. She is the daughter of Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu and the founding director of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. Find out about forthcoming Church Times events, including an online Lent retreat on Saturday (5 March), at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Find out more about the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Paul’s, Knightsbridge, in London. His books include The Wisdom of St Benedict: Monastic spirituality and the life of the Church (Canterbury Press), Touched by God (Bloomsbury), and Say it to God (Bloomsbury), which was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2018 Lent Book. They are all available to buy at the Church House Bookshop: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk Find out about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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, Global Mercy, set sail for Africa from Rotterdam. The charity says that the new ship will more than double its surgical and training capacity (News, 9 July 2021). Speaking in Rotterdam before the ship set sail, Princess Anne, who is a Patron of Mercy Ships, said: “A mixture of volunteers bring brilliant surgery, knowledge, and medical skills, from countries all over the world — but everybody who comes here has a skill and is happy to serve in whatever capacity will help the whole. The success Mercy Ships has had training doctors, dentists and medics to carry out the work in the future in their own countries — that is a real legacy.” Find out more about Mercy Ships at https://www.mercyships.org.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 represented in inscriptions and archaeology, as well as in biblical texts. Women Remembered is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £16.99 (CT Bookshop £15.29) Dr Helen K. Bond is Professor of Christian Origins and Head of the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Joan Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 published in this week’s Church Times (1 April). Cole is in conversation with Chine McDonald, director of Theos, whose latest book is God is Not a White Man: And other revelations (Hodder & Stoughton) (Podcast, 28 May 2021; (Books, 11 June 2021) This Here Flesh is published by John Murray Press and is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the discounted price of £14.99. https://colearthurriley.com/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 have many questions in the face of the horror of war and the shock of one European country invading another, something we regarded as unthinkable. Psalm 23 doesn’t answer our questions; instead, it transforms our context." The other speakers at the Festival of Preaching event were Malcolm Guite, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Rachel Mann, Lucy Winkett, and Angela Tilby. Buy a ticket to watch the whole event at https://festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk/preaching-in-perilous-times. The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in central London, and is the author of more than 30 books. His most recent, published by Canterbury Press, include Finding Abundance in Scarcity, A Cross in the Heart of God, and Love Mercy. The are all available to buy at https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk Find out about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 leaders, spoke at an event in Chernivtsi, "Faith in Ukraine," organised by the Elijah Interfaith Institute and the Peace Department. His two addresses at the event follow, and are used with the permission of the organisers. A video of the full event can be found at https://faithinukraine.com/stream/ Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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) Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist and writer. His recent books include Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: A guide for the spiritual journey (Angelico Press, 2021) and A Secret History of Christianity (John Hunt Publishing, 2019). Picture credit: Alamy Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 Religion. Read our story about it at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk In a Comment article for the Church Times this week (29 April), Nick writes: “People — in particular, certain kinds of atheist — do claim that science and religion are in complete tension. But it is not always clear where this alleged tension lies. To put it another way, there is a great deal of smoke hanging about the science and religion debate, the fog of an allegedly ancient war. But, beneath the smoke, where exactly is the fire?” Nick Spencer hosts the 'Reading Our Times' podcast, produced by Theos, which explores the books and ideas that are shaping us today. In 2019, he presented a three-part series on Radio 4, 'The Secret History of Science and Religion' (Comment, 21 June 2019, Radio, 28 June 2019). His next book, 'Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion', will be published by Oneworld Publications in March next year. His previous books include 'The Political Samaritan: How power hijacked a parable' (Bloomsbury, 2017), 'Mighty and the Almighty: How political leaders do God' (Biteback, 2017), and 'Evolution of the West: How Christianity has shaped our values' (SPCK, 2016). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

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 won the 2014 Booker Prize). The Living Sea of Waking Dreams tells the story of three Tasmanian siblings — Anna, Terzo, and Tommy — who are caring for their mother, Francie, at the end of her life. Flanagan wrote the novel in 2016, during the Tasmanian bushfires, and then updated it the next year when bushfires raged across Australia. “Climate change and wildlife extinction is deftly woven into a story of familial bonds and end-of-life care, and works as a broader canvas supporting the central narrative,” Susan writes in this week’s Church Times (6 May). The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is published by Vintage at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09); 978-1-5291-1405-8. Susan Gray writes about the arts and entertainment for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, and the Daily Mail. Picture credit: © JOEL SAGET Read previous Church Times Bookclub articles at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/books-arts/book-club Find out more about the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Tom Holland interviews Sam Wells about his latest book, Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a story to live by. Their conversation was recorded at an online book launch this week. Watch the full event, including Q&A, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4iTXOWSFag. In a review of the book published in The Church Times (Books, 29 April), John Saxbee writes: “While recent books have made a cogent case for Christianity today, Samuel Wells here succeeds in making that case in the light of, rather than in spite of, its cultural despisers. His approach is original, accessible, and compelling. . . “Each of ten topics has a separate chapter following a set pattern: the traditional Christian story; what’s wrong with it; the secular humanist rival to it; the rival’s flaws; Wells’s ‘story to live by’, and how this differs from the traditional and rival alternatives. It’s a methodology as old as Aquinas, but in Wells’s hands it feels as fresh as new paint.” Humbler Faith, Bigger God is published by Canterbury Press and is available from the Church House Bookshop for £14.99; 978-1-78622-418-7. The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the Vicar of St Martin-in-the Fields, in central London, and is the author of more than 30 books. Other recent books, also published by Canterbury Press, include Finding Abundance in Scarcity (Books, 6 August 2021), A Cross in the Heart of God (Books 22 January 2021), and Love Mercy (Books, 12 February 2021). Tom Holland is a historian, author, and broadcaster. His books include Dominion: The making of the Western mind (Little, Brown) (Features, Podcast, 27 September 2019), which Sam Wells talks about at the start of the podcast. Tom Holland co-hosts the hugely popular podcast The Rest is History. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Sir John Major, who was Prime Minister of the UK from 1992 to 1997, delivered a speech this week at the National Cathedrals Conference in Newcastle Cathedral. The conference, “Different Country, Different Church”, included talks, workshops, and debate about the direction of the Church on social, racial, and climate justice. Sir John spoke about the challenges facing the Church of England, in particular the “Herculean task” of maintaining its parish churches and cathedrals. “The lion’s share of the cost of maintaining this huge community asset falls on the diminishing number of regular worshippers. This is unjust. Some argue that it may be necessary to close churches, reduce the number of stipendiary clergy, and sell assets. I do hope not.” He also addressed issues in wider society, such as asylum and immigration, Brexit, Covid, and the cost-of-living crisis. “In times of austerity, we are told that we are ‘all in it together’,” he said. “If so, then logically, we should ‘all be in it together’ in times of prosperity. I hope the Government will devise a policy that encourages ‘trickle down’ and shares national growth more fairly.” An extended extract from the speech is featured on this week’s podcast. Read the full speech at https://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/latest-news/john-major-conference-speech-full-transcript. Read more about other talks at the conference at https://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/news. Picture credit: Simon Bray Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week, we bring you the second episode of the Church Times Book Club podcast, a monthly series launched last month in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. This month, Sarah Meyrick talks to Stephen Brown, the Church Times film critic, about the title he chose for this month’s Book Club: Jack by Marilynne Robinson. It is the fourth novel in a series: the other books are Gilead, Home, and Lila. But it is not necessary to know the other three books that precede it, Stephen says. “In some ways Jack is easier to access than the other ones, he says. “The previous books have been about a later period, whereas now we’re coming the understanding of where Jack is coming from. “It’s just immediately after the Second World War, it’s set in St Louis, Missouri, and it’s got a cast of Jack, who is a bit of a prodigal son, and his meeting with Della. She is black and he is white in a highly segregated society.” Stephen has also written about the book for this month’s Church Times Book Club feature. He writes: “Characters do, indeed, look through a glass darkly. Their perceptions are never wholly true. The preceding volumes furnished other (only partial) understandings of Jack. Calvin’s notion of depravity was based on the warped mirrors of his time, which failed to give the full picture. Jack, through sins of commission, sees himself as hopelessly incapable of being what he is meant to be.” Jack is published by Little, Brown at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09); 978-0-349-01179-0. Read previous Church Times Bookclub articles at www.churchtimes.co.uk/books-arts/book-club Find out more about the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature at faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, a chance to listen again (or perhaps for the first time) to the finalists’ talks in the 2021 Theology Slam, a competition to find engaging young voices who think theologically about the contemporary world. 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 speaks on “Community in a time of pandemic”. The final talk is by Flo O’Taylor, a Ph.D. student at Durham University, on “Justice in a time of pandemic”. The 2022 Theology Slam competition is organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press, and Heartedge, and is open to anyone aged 18 to 35. Entries close at 11.59pm on Monday 6 June. To enter, visit https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/theology-slam-entry-form-2022 Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church has been meeting in Edinburgh this week — the first time it has met in person since 2019 (although it has been set up as a hybrid gathering to include members who wish to participate over video link). Francis Martin has been there to report for the Church Times. He sat down on Saturday with the Primus, the Most Revd Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross & Caithness, to talk about how the meeting has gone. Bishop Strange also spoke about how the Scottish Episcopal Church is responding to the climate crisis; the recent St Andrew’s Declaration with the Church of Scotland (News, 3 December 2021); the mediation process in the diocese of Aberdeen & Orkney (News, 8 October 2021); and the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. Detailed reports of the Synod will be published in the 17 June issue of the Church Times and online in the coming days. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Sarah Meyrick interviews the Revd Richard Coles about his new book, Murder Before Evensong — a crime novel and his first foray into fiction. The book introduces us to Coles’s clerical sleuth: the Rector of Champton, Canon Daniel Clement, who shares the rectory with his widowed mother, Audrey, and two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. “I think anyone who’s been in parish ministry will find the life of the parish priest in some ways maps on to that of a detective,” Coles says. “Because you’re kind of looking at the exterior of things, and for disruptions in the pattern, and wondering what that might tell you about what’s going on underneath.” Coles also talks about how he is finding life after having left parish ministry Murder Before Evensong is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in hardback and eBook at £16.99, and audio download (Church Times Bookshop £13.59, with signed copies available while stocks last). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, the comedian and writer Paul Kerensa talks about the expanding and lucrative world of the Christian film industry. Paul has written two features for the Church Times exploring a century’s worth of Christian film. The first part was on cinema, and the second part on the rise of streaming services. Both can be read at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk Paul is a writer of books including So a Comedian Walks into a Church, TV shows including Not Going Out and Miranda, and plays including The First Broadcast, which is on tour now: https://paulkerensa.com/tour Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Widowland by C. J. Carey is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club — and on the podcast this week, Sarah Meyrick interviews the author, Jane Thynne (who wrote the book under the pen name C.J. Carey). The book was suggested by the Revd Richard Lamey, who has written this month’s Church Times Book Club essay about it. This is the third Book Club podcast, a monthly series launched recently in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Widowland is published by Quercus at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09); 978-1-5294-1200-0. Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month's book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About Widowland: The Coronation is approaching, but it is 1953 in an alternative universe, and Princess Elizabeth won’t be taking the throne. Widowland imagines a world in which Britain made peace with Germany in 1940. Under this new alliance, many of the men have been sent to the continent, or disappeared. As women now greatly outnumber men, they are categorised, when they reach 18, into a range of roles which shape everything about their future. Women over 50, and those too old to give birth, become marginalised and fall into the bottom rung of society. They live in a ghetto, Widowland. Outbreaks of insurgency emerge, and the Ministry of Culture gives the heroine, Rose, the task of infiltrating Widowland to find the source of this uprising. Will she carry out her instructions and betray the women? Picture credit: © Charles Kerr Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Ali Campbell talks about why he believes that youth and children’s work is facing a crisis — and what can be done to support this ministry. Ali is leading a new association, Paraklesis, to support lay people in youth, children’s, and family’s ministry, which is supported by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow. Read more about it here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/8-july/news/uk/new-association-offers-support-to-lay-workers-and-volunteers-in-youth-and-children-s-ministries Ali says: “Paraklesis, taken from the Greek, really just means to be alongside, to journey with, to be an advocate for. It’s where we get “Paraclete”, that sense of the Holy Spirit being the Comforter, and the one who is alongside us. So that’s why the name is what it is, because we want that to be what the organisation does.” Ali runs The Resource, a youth- and children’s-ministry consultancy, and is a former youth adviser for the diocese of Chichester. His books include Follow Me! (Kevin Mahew). https://www.paraklesis.org.uk https://theresource.org.uk Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, the Revd Dr Andrew Atherstone talks about his new book, Repackaging Christianity: Alpha and the building of a global brand — the first book length history of the Alpha movement. It’s published by Hodder & Stoughton and is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop for the reduced price of £19.80. The book “tells the remarkable story of Alpha . . . from its origins in the West London dinner party set of the 1970s, turbo charged by the influence of John Wimber and the Toronto Blessing in the 1990s, to what is now an international movement embraced on every continent in the world”. On the podcast, Dr Atherstone talks about what he uncovered while researching the book, explains how Alpha has evolved over the years, and addresses some of the criticisms that have been directed at the movement, from within and outside the Church. Dr Atherstone is Latimer Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of Oxford University's Faculty of Theology and Religion. His previous books include a biography of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Justin Welby: Risktaker and Reconciler (DLT, 2014). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Malcolm Guite talks about the faith of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the anniversary of whose death was marked on Monday (25 July). Part of the interview featured on the very first episode of the Church Times Podcast, in 2017, shortly after the publication of his book Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder & Stoughton) (Books, 10 February 2017). “Coleridge roots our own capacity to know through the imagination with the divine imagination. And he sees the imagination with which we perceive the world as an echo in the finite mind of the eternal and infinite act of creation in the divine”, Malcolm says. “That’s dynamite, that’s an amazing thing he’s actually saying: anybody engaged in a moment of artistic apprehension and intuition is echoing the way God made the world and helping to see it.” After the interview, Malcolm reads a sonnet that he wrote for Coleridge. It was recorded in St Michael’s, Highgate, in north London, where Coleridge is buried. Malcolm’s most recent book is Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God (Canterbury Press) (Faith feature, 13 May, Books 1 July). The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club — and on the podcast this week, the author is interviewed by Francis Martin (who has written this month’s Book Club essay about it). Thubron is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist, whose eight novels and 11 works of non-fiction make up an oeuvre that transports readers around the globe, and deep into the human psyche. He is a former President of the Royal Society of Literature. As well as talking about Night of Fire (synopsis below), the conversation explores the relationship between travel writing and fiction, faith and neuroscience, and the part played by doubt in the creative process. The conversation was recorded at Colin Thubron’s home in west London. This is the fourth Book Club podcast, a monthly series launched recently in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Night of Fire is published by Vintage at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09). Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About Night of Fire: A fire spreads through a house, threatening to engulf the six tenants: a failed priest, an atheist neurosurgeon, and an obsessive photographer, along with a naturalist, a schoolboy, and a traveller. Each has lived a fascinating life, conjured in Thubron’s lyrical prose. But, as the inferno courses through the building, we start to notice inexplicable resonances between the lives of the tenants: motifs that recur and details that repeat, and that surely cannot all be explained as coincidence. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

The Revd Guy Hewitt is to be the first Racial Justice Director of the Church of England, it was announced this week. In April 2018, when he was the High Commissioner for Barbados to the United Kingdom, Mr Hewitt was interviewed on the Church Times Podcast about the campaign he led for thousands of members of the Windrush generation to be recognised as British citizens. He had written about it in the Church Times earlier that month, as the campaign was gathering pace (Comment, 13 April 2018). “The policy U-turn that the Government made in less than two weeks of this becoming an issue was, for me, a modern-day miracle,” he said in the interview. “It was unprecedented for a government to take such a drastic and radical change of position in such a time-frame.” Later in the interview, he said: “What we were in this for was to get justice for the Windrush generation. For me it’s not about recriminations or even who is at fault: it is about continuing to work forward to find a solution.” He concluded: “One of the roles of that the Church of England, that the Christian community, that the interfaith community can do is to find a way of reinforcing the love, the togetherness, the solidarity that exists. "This country has got to find a way, once and for all in the 21st century, when we are talking about a modern, global Britain, to be able to put aside all forms of discrimination and move forward as a single people, united under one Kingdom, which is Great Britain.”

A Terrible Kindness, the debut novel by Jo Browning Wroe, is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club — and on the podcast this week, the author speaks to the Revd Malcolm Doney (who has written this month’s Book Club essay about it). The book is published by Faber & Faber at £14.99 (Church Times Bookshop £13.49). Jo Browning Wroe has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, and is Creative Writing Supervisor at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. A Terrible Kindness, a Sunday Times bestseller, was inspired by conversations that she had with two embalmers who had volunteered to help at the Aberfan disaster when they were young men in 1966, and from her own childhood experience of growing up at a crematorium in Birmingham where her father was a supervisor (fuller synopsis below). The Book Club podcast is a monthly series launched recently in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Jo Browning Wroe will be a speaker at the next festival, in February 2023. Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About A Terrible Kindness: The fictional story of a newly qualified embalmer William Lavery, who, on hearing the news of the Aberfan disaster in 1966, volunteers to help. The experience alters him profoundly, forcing him to revisit the painful losses in his own life — the death of his father, the disappointment of a lost musical career, and an estranged relationship with his mother. The story charts William’s inner turmoil over the ensuing years: covering his attempts to find redemption by mending fractured relationships, reconnecting with music, and reaching out to others. The story ends with his return to the disaster site 17 years later. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Since the death of Her Majesty the Queen last week, many have drawn attention to her deep Christian faith, which inspired dedicated, humble service during her 70-year reign. On the podcast this week, the Rt Revd Graham James, a former Bishop of Norwich, talks about the late Queen’s Christian faith and her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He has also written an article in this week’s Church Times, which can be read at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk. There is also extensive coverage of tributes, funeral plans, an obituary, and more. “One of the things that really struck me was that the Queen’s faith was interwoven entirely and completely with the rest of her life,” he says. “And I think it came out of an era in which she was formed in which the Book of Common Prayer was still the absolute bedrock of the Church of England, in which the assumption is that God is woven into part of human life and is not a leisure activity for weekends or something that appeals to only a section of the population. . . He says later in the interview: “The Queen did move with the times. . . she accommodated herself, without changing in herself, to a changing culture. But the one thing that she didn’t cease to do, which much of England had ceased to do during her reign, was go to church and speak of the importance of the Christian faith to her. “What we saw was a country that never wanted the Queen, let alone the rest of the Royal Family, to give up going to church, but wanted sometimes to do this on their behalf, because they saw in her a unity between Church and State, they saw in her, as a figurehead without political power, a means of creating harmony in the country. And I think instinctively people realised that came from a deeply held Christian conviction on her part.” Picture credit: Alamy Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Dame Hilary Mantel, the acclaimed author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70, her publisher has announced. At an event at Launde Abbey in 2019, Dame Hilary reflected on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. The short talk that she gave at the start of the event is featured on this week’s podcast. It was recorded about a year before the publication of the final book in the triology, The Mirror & the Light (Fourth Estate) (Books, 12 June 2020). The full event, at which the Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch also spoke, can be listened to https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/2-august/regulars/podcast/hilary-mantel-and-diarmaid-macculloch-at-launde-abbey-remembering-thomas-cromwell An edited record of their talks and conversation can be read at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/2-august/features/features/make-something-of-me-creating-thomas-cromwell Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Matt Rowland Hill talks to Sarah Meyrick about his critically acclaimed memoir, Original Sins. The book tells the story of growing up as the son of an Evangelical Baptist minister in South Wales and then Leighton Buzzard, fraught with bitter family conflict and fear of damnation. After rejecting religion in his late teens , he became addicted to crack and heroin, eventually being set on the path to recovery with the help of a Christian rehab charity. “They had a different style of Christianity to my parents’,” he says. “They felt that they were helping me because they were expressing God’s love, and that just blew my mind. . . “Did I then become the prodigal son and come back to Christianity? It would have made a very nice story if I had.” Original Sins is published by Chatto & Windus at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29) Picture credit: Laura Lewis Music for the podcast is by Twisterium Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek is the choice for this month's Church Times Book Club - and on the podcast this week, the author speaks to Rachel Mann (who has written this month's Book Club essay about it). The book is published by Canongate and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About the book: To Calais In Ordinary Time is a work of historical fiction set in England in 1348. It covers the story of a group of travellers journeying towards Calais across England as the Black Death sweeps across Europe. Written in a way to capture the authenticity of spoken medieval English, the language is interspersed with Middle English words. The young noblewoman’s language is marked by Norman French, the learned proctor’s language is punctuated with Latinisms, and the language of the down-to-earth adventurous ploughman is more Saxon. It is a novel about life, love, death, and war, set during a time of turbulence and uncertainty across Europe. Picture credit: © MARZENA POGORSALY Music for the podcast is by Twisterium Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

This week’s podcast features talks from the final of the Theology Slam 2022, which took place on 27 September in St Edmund Roundhay, in Leeds, as part of the HeartEdge conference “Humbler Church, Bigger God”. Theology Slam is a competition to find engaging young voices who think theologically about the contemporary world. Its organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press, and HeartEdge. The first finalist to speak is Alex Clare-Young, a pioneer minister in the United Reformed Church, currently serving in Cambridge, who is in the final stages of submitting a thesis for a Ph.D. in queer theologies at the University of Birmingham. Alex, who is a trans non-binary person, spoke on the implications of the incarnation for how Christians think about the body. The second finalist is Victoria Turner, also a member of the URC, who is in the final stages of a Ph.D. in world Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, where she is exploring developments in Christian mission. Victoria spoke on the theme of justice in relation to Amos 5. The third finalist is Amanda Higgin, who is training as a Baptist minister at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, alongside working towards a Master’s degree in New Testament theology, with a focus on the Letter to the Hebrews. Amanda's talk was on the topic of recovery. Watch the whole event, including, judges’ feedback and Q&A, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9E4CHXphg4&ab_channel=ChurchTimes Read the winning talk at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/7-october/comment/opinion/theology-slam-winner-wandering-from-pain-to-healing Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Find out about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, Jo Swinney talks to Sarah Meyrick about A Place at The Table: Faith, hope and hospitality. The book is a joint project with Jo’s late mother, Miranda Harris, who died suddenly in October 2019. Mrs Harris and her husband, Peter, founded the Christian conservation charity A Rocha International. In an age when loneliness and isolation have reached unprecedented levels, the book calls for Christians to embrace the practice of hospitality — which can be simpler and more profound than is often imagined. “To be hospitable doesn’t require culinary excellence or matching cutlery — it doesn’t even require a home of one's own; true hospitality offers a welcome into imperfection and messiness, a place to belong and be embraced.” A Place at The Table is published by Hodder & Soughton at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29) placeatthetable.info Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Sarah Meyrick, who has written this month’s Book Club essay about the memoir. The book, which won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography, is published by Vintage and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/ Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams considers the significance of the Christian hope of a new heaven and a new earth. The talk was delivered this week in St Martin-in-the-Fields, in central London, as part of its autumn lecture series, “What am I living for?”, in partnership with the Church Times. The next lecture in the series, on Monday 21 November, is by Grayson Perry, and is on the theme of art. Book tickets at https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/whatson-event/what-am-i-living-for-art Rowan Williams will be delivering the Sir Tony Baldry Lecture at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, which takes place in Winchester in February. Find out more about the festival programme and how to buy tickets at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the novelist Robert Harris talks to Susan Gray about his latest book, Act of Oblivion. The novel takes place in the aftermath of the English Civil War, and swings between Restoration England and pre-Independence, Puritan New England. “A huge manhunt was started: 59 people signed the death warrant of Charles I, and there were about 30 left alive,” Harris says. “They were wanted, together with anyone who had sat as a judge on the King. A manhunt would make good structure for a novel, especially if I could invent a manhunter-in-chief: someone must have co-ordinated this hunt which went on across the Continent and throughout England.” The book is reviewed in this week’s 12-page Christmas Books supplement, and a write up of the interview also appears. Robert Harris is the author of 15 best-selling novels, including Fatherland, Conclave, Munich, and The Second Sleep (Books, 29 November 2019). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Act of Oblivion is published by Hutchinson Heinemann at £22 (Church Times Bookshop £19.80); 978-1-5291-5175-6. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, James Runcie talks to Sarah Meyrick about his new memoir, Tell Me Good Things: On love, death and marriage. It tells the story of his love for his late wife, Marilyn Imrie, a drama director, singer, and artist, who died of motor neurone disease (MND) in August 2020. “It’s about grief, and love. And I hope it’s also about gratitude and thank fulness,” Runcie says. James Runcie is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and film-maker. He is the author of twelve novels including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His most recent novel is The Great Passion (Books, 8 April). Tell Me Good Things is published by Bloomsbury at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £11.69); 978-1526655448. James Runcie will be in conversation with the tenor James Gilchrist at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature in February 2023. Tickets available now at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/ Photo credit: KT Bruce Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On this accompanying podcast, Dr Natalie K. Watson, who has written the Book Club essay about the book, talks to Sarah Meyrick. The book is published by Picador at £8.99 and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.09. Dr Natalie K. Watson is a theologian, writer, and editor, living in Peterborough. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About the book: Inspired by the Vardø storm and the witch trials in northern Norway in 1621, The Mercies follows the lives of the women who are left behind on their remote island after a ferocious storm wipes out all the men at sea. In the storm’s wake, the women learn to embrace independence, but their newfound strength is put to the test when an official arrives from the mainland armed with the task of dismantling their power and restoring male domination. The women’s independence is perceived as subversive, and charges of witchcraft soon follow. A chilling witch hunt begins.

This week, the Revd Michael Coren is interviewed about his book The Rebel Christ. The book is is published in the UK by Canterbury Press and is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop for the discounted price of £10.39. Michael is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, a contributing columnist for the Toronto Star, and the author of more than 18 books. He also writes regularly for publications such as the Globe and Mail, The New Statesman, and the Church Times. Once a high-profile figure in conservative Roman Catholicism in Canada, about a decade ago Michael changed his mind on issues such as same-sex marriage and embraced a more progressive form of Christian faith. It cost him his lucrative broadcasting career and made him the target of vitriol, but he says he found freedom in the radical and progressive nature of the gospel. The Rebel Christ starts with the question: "Why is it that the purest, most supremely liberating philosophy and theology in all of history is now seen by so many people around the world as intolerant, legalistic, and even irrelevant religion embraced only by the gullible, the foolish, and the judgmental?" Interview by Ed Thornton https://michaelcoren.com Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Bishop of Maine, the Rt Revd Thomas James Brown, talks to Madeleine Davies about the American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Elizabeth Strout – many of whose books are set in the State of Maine, New England. They discuss, among other things, Strout’s depiction of the Puritan mindset, the challenges of small-town ministry, and how clergy might respond to the gossip that occurs in their communities. Bishop Brown also considers the comparison often made between Elizabeth Strout and Marilynne Robinson. Madeleine has written a feature on Elizabeth Strout for this week’s Church Times (16 December). Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, short stories by Omer Friedlander, is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Susan Gray, who has written this month’s book club essay about the book (read it at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/books-arts/book-club) The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is a collection of 11 short stories. They are all set in modern-day Israel, transporting the reader to the lush orange groves in Jaffa, the arid Negev desert, and the narrow alleyways of Jerusalem. The stories are set against the conflict in the region, but the focus remains on the individual characters with their own tales of love, heartbreak, loss, and strife. The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is published by John Murray Press at £14.99 (Church Times Bookshop £13.49); 978-1-399-80394-6. Omer Friedlander is a young Israeli-born writer who now lives in Brooklyn, in New York City. He was born in Jerusalem in 1994, and grew up in Tel Aviv, before studying English Literature at the University of Cambridge. From there, he continued his studies in the United States, and achieved an MFA from Boston University, supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. His writing has achieved global success in Canada, France, Israel, and the US, and his short stories have won many literary awards, including first place in the Baltimore Review Winter Contest, and the Shmuel Traum Literary Translation Prize. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader Picture creidt: © Yab Traiber

On the podcast this week, the writer and comedian Cariad Lloyd talks about her new book, You Are Not Alone: A new way to grieve. The book is a distilliation of what she has learned through her award-winning podcast, Griefcast. “I think we don’t talk about death enough, basically,” she says. “Even if we’re better than we were, say, 50 years ago, we don’t give space to grief. We don’t allow people to be sad. We kind of expect people after a year, maybe two years, to stop going on about it, even if we never say that out loud.” You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury Tonic and is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk https://cariadlloyd.com Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader Picture credit: BBC/Fremantle Media/Talkback

On the podcast this week, the writer and activist Symon Hill talks about protest and Christian faith. Symon was arrested on 11 September during the Proclamation of the King’s Accession in Oxford, after shouting “Who elected him?”. The charges against him were dropped earlier this month (News, 13 January). He talks on the podcast about the importance of the right to protest peacefully, as well as about why he believes that forms of non-violent direct action are often necessary in the pursuit of justice, such as when campaigning against the arms trade. He also talks about his new book, The Peace Protestors: A history of modern-day war resistance, which the Revd Fraser Dyer described as a “richly detailed and thoroughly readable history of the past forty years of peace protest in the UK” (Books, 23 December). An extract from the book is published in this week’s Church Times, as well as a feature by Symon on activism and Christian faith. Read here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/27-january/features/features/symon-hill-my-arrest-for-querying-the-king. The Peace Protestors is published by Pen and Sword History at £25 (CT Bookshop £22.50). https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk As well as being a writer and activist, Symon works part-time for the Peace Pledge Union and teaches History and Religious Studies for the Workers’ Educational Association. https://symonhill.org Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, Rachel Mann, who has written this month’s book club essay about the book, is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick. The Inseparables is published by Vintage at £9.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.99); 978-1-78487-718-7. The Inseparables is an autobiographical novel that was never published in Simone de Beauvoir’s lifetime, as it was considered too intimate for publication at the time of its writing in the 1950s. It covers the real-life story of de Beauvoir’s adolescent relationship with Zaza, which had a profound effect on the philosopher’s thinking and writing. Zaza died at the age of 21. In the book, Zaza is represented by the character Andrée Gallard, and the author appears as the narrator, Sylvie Lepag. Set in France just after the First World War, the story follows their ten-year relationship from the age of nine, describing their in-depth discussions about equality, justice, and religion. Their teachers deemed them “inseparable”. The late Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) is heralded as being one of the most important philosophers and feminists of the 20th century. She worked alongside the French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and became one of the leaders of the existentialist movement. Her writing included work on philosophy, feminism, fiction, autobiography, and politics. Her books include the novel The Mandarins (1957), which won the Prix Goncourt. The author is best known for her influential philosophical work The Second Sex (1949) — a work of feminist philosophy which was put on Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester from 24 to 26 February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk. Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader Music for the podcast is by Twisterium

The General Synod voted this week to welcome the Bishops’ proposals to provide prayers to bless same-sex unions in church — but with a last-minute clarification that their use would not contradict the Church’s current teaching on marriage. On the podcast this week, Francis Martin speaks to different Synod members to hear their reactions to the vote — from both those who welcome it and those who do not. Picture credit: Max Colson/Church Times Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

We are pleased to present a new poetry podcast for Lent, in association with Canterbury Press. This week, Canon Mark Oakley reflects on “Paternoster” by Jen Hadfield. "Paternoster" is published in her collection Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize. We are grateful to Bloodaxe Books for giving permission to play a recording of Jen Hadfield reading the poem. bloodaxebooks.com. “‘Paternoster’ is, to my mind, one of her most beautiful poems,” Mark says. “It is a prayer of a draughthorse in which she reworks the texture and rhythm of the Lord’s Prayer through the horse’s heart. . . If you want a glimpse of the beauty of a prayerful, intimate litany from a tired but hopeful heart then I recommend you listen to it as well as read it. Hadfield’s poems are mesmeric and are meant, as are all poems, to be heard.” The material in this podcast is taken from Mark Oakley’s book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John's College, Cambridge. Artwork: Emily Noyce Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

In the second episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Don’t give me the whole truth” by Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994). The poem is published in Hauge’s 1996 collection of the same name, published by Anvil Press Poetry, an imprint of Carcanet Press. “Here in this poem, Hauge prays that he will only be given enough in life to keep him going,” Mark says. “He doesn’t want all that there is. Like birds who only carry off a few drops of water from the stream, or wind that only takes a grain of salt from the ocean, he doesn’t want to possess everything or understand it completely. “Instead, he asks for glints, epiphanies, droplet recognitions that feed us enough to keep us exploring but not enough to make us feel we have arrived. It is the prayer of a pilgrim.” The material in this podcast is taken from Mark Oakley’s book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge. Artwork: Emily Noyce Producer: Ed Thornton Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On this episode of the Book Club Podcast, the Revd Alexander Faludy, who has written about the book in this week’s Church Times, is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick. Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s war novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in 1937, near Segovia, during the Spanish Civil War. The lead character, Robert Jordan, is a young American teacher who volunteers to help a group of guerrilla fighters blow up a bridge to stop the advance of Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. The drama evolves over three days at the cave hideout of the guerrilla fighters in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra. During that time, Robert Jordan falls in love with a Spanish girl, Maria. As tension mounts and death seems certain, the book’s title, derived from one of the metaphysical poet John Donne’s meditations takes resonance: “Ask not for whom the bell tolls It tolls for thee.” Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was an author and journalist, and is celebrated as one of the leading American 20th-century novelists. For Whom the Bell Tolls is published by Cornerstone at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09); 978-0-09-990860-9. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

In the third episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Love (III)” by George Herbert. “Over my years of reading Herbert, I have come to see him as the poet who most expresses our relationship with God as a friendship,” Mark says. “I’m not talking about friendship in terms of the 600 ‘Friends’ we have on Facebook, but rather the one or two people who have changed our life for good and maybe at some cost to us both. “Thinking about these friends can dare us to reflect, as I think did Herbert, that our life with God is a friendship that asks of us a mutual freedom. Friendship deepens as honesty deepens. We cannot put the other on a pedestal. We must try and prize off the mask that has begun to eat into our face. We need to be brave in hearing what we don’t like or saying what we have never dared. “Friendship requires courage enough to stop skating so quickly over our own thin ice in case we disappear through the cracks. Instead, we face the fact that we need support and connection and that, also, we have much to give as well.” The material in this podcast is taken from Mark Oakley’s book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge. Artwork by Emily Noyce Producer: Ed Thornton Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

In the fourth episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Winter Swans” by Owen Sheers, published in his collection Skirrid Hill (Seren Books, 2005). “Those with a religious belief are as human as everyone else,” Mark says. “They live with the ebb and flow of the heart, as well as the pain of what the past is up to in the present. "Deep within the heart of Christian faith, though, is the belief that human beings were made for relationship, and that, although many things work against this — past traumas, present stresses, future doubts — it is an elemental part of the human adventure to seek to place our relationships in good order, integrated with honesty, freedom, and mutual concern.” Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge. His book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press) won the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Artwork by Emily Noyce Producer: Ed Thornton Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

In the fifth episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on the poem “Prayer” by Zaffar Kunial, published in his collection Us (Faber & Faber, 2018). “The beauty of life is heard in this poem, but are the prayers that emerge out of its fragility and pain heard by anyone, by God?” Canon Oakley says. “For all our stores of knowledge and ingenuity, there are questions whose answers remain unknown in life. Our approach to them can distil us or destroy us. The poet John Keats referred to “negative capability” . . . that is, the ability we can have to hold doubts and mysteries without resolving them, resisting the impatience for quick clarity, in order to deepen and learn from them. “This is a defining characteristic of Kunial’s work, and certainly one of its attractions. The natural reticence mixed with the quiet strength of not grasping to a single view is, for me, very aligned to the sensibilities of a religious faith.” This is the last of Canon Oakley’s Lent podcasts. The series will continue in Holy Week when Malcolm Guite will reflect on a series of sonnets. Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge. His book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press) won the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Artwork by Emily Noyce. Producer: Ed Thornton Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie talks about his new book, Touching Cloth: Confessions and communions of a young priest. He is interviewed by Ed Thornton. In a review of the book for the Church Times, the Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen says the book “tells the story of his [Fergus’s] first year as a priest at a city-centre church in Liverpool. The book is in the style of a diary following the liturgical year. It is filled with many funny stories of clerical mishaps, and profound spiritual reflections.” Read an extract from the book in this week's Church Times. Touching Cloth is published by Bantam Press (an imprint of Transworld) at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29). The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie is a writer and priest who has ministered in parishes in Liverpool and central London. His previous books are A Field Guide to the English Clergy (Books, 30 November 2018, Podcast, 7 December 2018) and Priests de la Résistance! Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, Olivia Jackson talks about her book (Un)Certain: A collective memoir of deconstructing faith. After the interview, she reads a short excerpt from the book. Faith deconstruction — the intentional examination of one's religious faith and beliefs, leading to a profound change in, or even loss of, that faith — has received increasing attention in the past few years, with the emergence of podcasts and online fora dedicated to discussing it. So, who are the people who deconstruct their faith, what causes them to do so, and where does the journey take them? (Un)Certain is a collective memoir built on the stories and reflections of more than 150 interviewees and nearly 400 survey respondents from all over the world, including the author's own story. Read an extract from the book here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/10-march/features/features/faith-that-expects-you-to-fall (Un)Certain is published by SCM Press and is available to buy from the Church Times Bookshop: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334063636/uncertain Olivia Jackson spent nearly 20 years working for mission agencies in the UK and overseas, and then as a human rights consultant with a focus on violence against women and girls, all of which fed into her own faith deconstruction. She lives on the side of a windswept hill with two dogs. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). “In composing these sonnets, I had in mind that mysterious and beautiful phrase in the Psalms about the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion (Psalm 84.5),” he says. “I wanted to develop the hint offered in that phrase that there is an inner as well as an outer Jerusalem, and that therefore the events of Holy Week are both about Jesus’s outward visible and historical entry into Jerusalem. and what he did there, and also about his entry into the inner Jerusalem, 'the seething holy city' of our own hearts.” The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader