The Church Times Podcast

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to author and Church Times columnist Paul Vallely about his new book, Philanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg (Bloomsbury). The book was reviewed in last week’s Church Times by Alan Billings, who writes: “‘Philanthropy’”, as used by Paul Vallely, is elastic enough to range from the widow’s mite to Bill Gates’s billions, from a religious duty to a voluntary offering, from one-to-one almsgiving to the charitable foundation, with mixed motives at every point. It also ranges across time — from Aristotle to Mark Zuckerberg. It is a very big book.” Philanthropy is available from the Church Times Bookshop for the special price of £25. Read an extract in this week’s Church Times (18 September). Podcast edited by Serena Long. 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. Anglican ordinands studying in the UK, Ireland or the Diocese in Europe are eligible for a free Church Times subscription. Apply online at www.churchtimes.co.uk/ordinands Join us on Tuesday 29th September for a virtual Festival of Preaching. Speakers include Mark Oakley, Rachel Mann and Malcolm Guite. Go to festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

On the podcast this week, rapper and playwright Testament interviews Leroy Logan, former superintendent in the Metropolitan police and co-founder of the National Black Police Association. They discuss Logan’s forthcoming book, Closing Ranks: My Life as a Cop – including his early experiences as a black police officer and his founding of the NBPA — as well as his faith, family, and what he hopes the Black Lives Matter movement will achieve. “I knew I was going into certain corridors of power and He had to be with me . . . and if I went into any situation operationally or strategically. . . I wasn’t on my own, I’ve got the heavenly host behind me. . . I’ve got the Holy Spirit. . . But I had to be totally adherent to what the Lord was telling me to do and how to do it” Logan’s story is being adapted by Steve McQueen as part of the BBC’s Small Axe series, starring John Boyega and due to be released later this month. You can read an edited transcript of the interview in this week’s Church Times (11 September).a Podcast edited by Serena Long. Closing Ranks: My Life as a Cop will be published by SPCK on 17 September at £14.99 (Church Times Bookshop £13.50) 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. Anglican ordinands studying in the UK, Ireland or the Diocese in Europe are eligible for a free Church Times subscription. Apply online at www.churchtimes.co.uk/ordinands Join us on Tuesday 29th September for a virtual Festival of Preaching. Speakers include Mark Oakley, Rachel Mann and Malcolm Guite. Go to festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Joe Walsh, founder of Faith in Operation, an initiative which invites Christians to consider giving a kidney to a stranger. They discuss the prospect of this “altruistic kidney donation” ending the transplantation waiting list, as well as Joe’s own experience of kidney donation and the effect of the coronavirus on those awaiting transplants. “After giving my kidney, I started to wonder why there was never any concerted Christian effort to promote altruistic kidney donation, because they just seem to fit so neatly together.” Find out more about Faith in Operation at www.faithinoperation.co.uk Joe has written a piece for the Church Times this week to coincide with Organ Donation Week. Podcast edited by Serena Long. 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. Anglican ordinands studying in the UK, Ireland or the Diocese in Europe are eligible for a free Church Times subscription. Apply online at www.churchtimes.co.uk/ordinands Join us on Tuesday 29th September for a virtual Festival of Preaching. Speakers include Mark Oakley, Rachel Mann and Malcolm Guite. Go to https://festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to journalist, broadcaster, and campaigner Andrew Graystone about his new book, Faith, Hope and Mischief: Tiny acts of rebellion by an everyday activist (Canterbury Press). Andrew is the person who, after the mass shooting in a mosque in Christchurch, stood outside his local mosque in Manchester with a cardboard sign saying, “You are my friends. I'll watch while you pray.” A steadfast believer in the power of tiny acts to change the world, his book describes this and other stories of "everyday activism". “Everyday activism is about little acts of resistance. It’s about lighting candles in dark rooms, encouraging people who have lost hope, touching people who feel that they’re untouchable.” Faith, Hope and Mischief is now available from Church House Bookshop. Podcast edited by Serena Long. 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. Anglican ordinands studying in the UK, Ireland or the Diocese in Europe are eligible for a free Church Times subscription. Apply online at www.churchtimes.co.uk/ordinands

The Mirror and the Light, the conclusion to Dame Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, was published in March, and has since been nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It was reviewed by Alec Ryrie in the Church Times here. On this week’s podcast — taken from our archive — Dame Hilary and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch reflect on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. They were speaking in July 2019 at an event to mark the 900th anniversary of Launde Abbey, which Cromwell was fond of visiting. In part one, we hear presentations from each of them about how, as a novelist and historian respectively, they approached the Putney boy who became Henry VIII’s chief minister. You can listen to the second half of their discussion here, and an edited record of the full conversation is available here. Both The Mirror and the Light and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell: A life can be purchased from the Church House Bookshop website. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks

This week, we’ve visited the archive for an interview between Andrew Brown and bestselling historian Tom Holland, whose book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind is now out in paperback. “This isn’t a history of Christianity,” Holland says. “It’s a history of what’s been revolutionary and transformative about Christianity: about how Christianity has transformed not just the West, but the entire world. “People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything.” Dominion is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks

On the podcast this week, Vicky Walker talks to author and theologian Tara Isabella Burton about her new book, Strange Rites: New religions for a godless world. They discuss the breakdown of public trust in major religious (and other) institutions, the subsequent rise of wellness culture in the US and beyond, and the part that technology plays in the formation of identity, community, and spiritual beliefs. “What we’re seeing is not a kind of secularisation of America between the religious and the not-religious, but a reimagining of religion as this kind of more individualised, more intuitional religion of the self, where people want to mix and match and play around with different traditions, different belief systems, different practices.” You can read the an edited transcript of the interview and an edited extract from the book in this week’s Church Times (7 August). Strange Rites: New religions for a godless world is published by Public Affairs Books at £20 (Church Times Bookshop £18, from September). Picture credit: Rose Callahan Podcast edited by Serena Long. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks

This week’s podcast guest is Karen Gibson, the founder and director of the Kingdom Choir. She wrote for the Church Times last week about how her mother, a member of the Windrush generation, was asked not to return to a C of E church 50 years ago, but recently received an impassioned apology from its new vicar. Karen talks to Ed Thornton about her mother’s reaction to the apology and the conversations that still need to happen within the Church to combat racism, as well as how the members of her choir have leaned on each other during lockdown. “We are wired for connection and community. We are wired to reach out and touch somebody. To hold, to hug; that is what we are wired for.” Podcast edited by Serena Long Picture credit: PA Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks

This week, we bring a talk given by Malcolm Guite at the sixth Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, in Oxfordshire, in February. Drawing on some of his own sonnets from his collection, Parable and Paradox (Canterbury Press, 2016), and on the work of Donne and Herbert, Malcolm explores the two great commandments, and, more widely, the call and response of love in the Christian life. His most recent poetry collection is After Prayer (Canterbury Press). Watch Malcolm’s other talk at the festival, with Roger Wagner, here. Malcolm Guite is well-known to Church Times readers for his weekly Poet’s Corner column. The second collection of columns, Heaven in Ordinary, will published on 20 September by Canterbury Press. Podcast edited by Serena Long. Picture credit: KT Bruce Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks

On this week’s podcast, Ed Thornton talks to Ysenda Maxtone Graham about her new book, British Summer Time Begins: The school summer holidays 1930-1980 (Little, Brown) (Church Times Bookshop £17.10). Ysenda has written a piece on holidays and churchgoing for this week’s Church Times. They discuss Christian house-swaps and clergy holidays, as well as how much the school summer holiday experience has changed. “A typical day out meant going somewhere in the fresh air that didn’t charge for entry. . . I like to think that in this coronavirus time we’ve sort of relearned that — the joy of non-materialism.” British Summer Time Begins is reviewed here by the Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen. “This book would be an interesting read during any summer, to see how the British had been, how children were treated, what people’s values and lifestyles were, the relationship between the sexes, how the class structure functioned, and what people’s hopes and fears were. Read in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, it has a gripping, questioning, and slightly surreal quality.” Podcast edited by Serena Long. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks