The Church Times Podcast

At Launde Abbey last month, Dame Hilary Mantel and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch reflected on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. They were speaking at an event to mark the 900th anniversary of Launde Abbey, which Cromwell was fond of visiting. Both hardly need introducing. Mantel is, of course, the author of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, published by Fourth Estate, each of which were awarded the Booker Prize. The final book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is due to be published next March. Professor MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell: A life, was published last year by Allen Lane, to critical acclaim. In this week’s Church Times, we publish an edited record of their fascinating discussion. And on the podcast we bring you even more of the event. In this episode, part 1, we hear presentations from each of them about how, as a novelist and historian respectively, they have approached the Putney boy who became Henry VIII’s chief minister. The event was introduced and moderated by the Bishop of Brixworth, the Rt Revd John Holbrook.

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

Last month, Oxford University was given £150m by a US billionaire, Stephen A. Schwarzman, to study the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence. In the announcement, he warned that technology left unaffected would “trample over certain aspects of human behaviour and human opportunities”, before setting out the potential to “reaffirm western values” and “help the world adjust to changing times.” Which raises the question: whose values exactly would we be reaffirming? We commissioned this week’s Artificial Intelligence special to explore this question, and others surrounding ethics and AI. In particular, we asked four writers to reflect on what the Bishop of Oxford has suggested is the deep question of our age: “What does it mean to be a human?” We also feature an extract from a new book by Tom Chivers, who spent months with some of those who have long worried about the existential threat posed by AI. In this podcast, Madeleine Davies talks to him about how worried we should be. Tom’s book, The AI Does Not Hate You: Superintelligence, rationality and the race to save the world, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at £16.99 (CT Bookshop £15.30).

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

It’s time for the Church to start talking about race, says Ben Lindsay, a Pastor at Emmanuel Church, in south London and CEO and founder of Power the Fight, a charity that empowers communities to end youth violence. From the UK Church’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade to the whitewashing of Christianity throughout history, the Church has a lot to answer for when it comes to race relations, he says. His book, We Need to Talk About Race, is published on 18 July by SPCK. The Archbishop of Canterbury says that it is “a must-read for the UK Church”. Ben Lindsay will be speaking about the book at a free event at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 October. Madeleine Davies interviewed Ben Lindsay about the book in a café in south London.

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

Barbara Brown Taylor says that it wasn’t until she began digging into the faith of those who didn’t share hers, that she really began to understand her own. It was this journey towards meeting God in “so many new hats” that ignited her “holy envy” – the title of her new book, published in the UK by Canterbury Press. Barbara Brown Taylor sat down with Martin Wroe at the Church Times offices to talk about the book, which is available from the Church Times Bookshop at £15.29. An edited version of the interview is printed in our first Summer Books supplement, which comes with this Friday’s Church Times (28 June). The 12-page supplement includes holiday reading recommendations from contributors including Paula Gooder, Malcolm Guite, Fergus Butler-Gallie, Bishop Stephen Cottrell, and Eve Poole. There are also reviews of novels, non-fiction, and spiritual titles.

The fashion for big history - books that no only survey the rise and fall of humans and their societies, but also try to discern some order from within the chaos - has grown a great deal in recent years. Names like Niall Ferguson, Yuval Noah Harari, Francis Fukuyama, and Peter Frankopan are widely known and respected. But, before them all, in the 1990s, Jared Diamond was publishing books that married biology, anthropology, ecology, linguistics, and history, and really set the pattern for the genre. The Pulitzer-prize winning author's latest book, Upheaval: How nations cope with crisis and change (Penguin), explores how seven countries – Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, and the United States – have managed to cope with major crises in their history. Nick Spencer spoke to Jared Diamond about the book during a recent visit to London – the same day, as it happened, that President Trump was in town. Upheaval: How nations cope with crisis and change is published by Penguin at £14.99.

This week, Hattie Williams talks to the Bishop of Kensington, Dr Graham Tomlin, about his report, The Social Legacy of Grenfell: An agenda for change. 14 June marks the second anniversary of the Grenfell disaster. And Ed Thornton talks to the Revd Nicholas Mercer – a former Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, who campaigns with the charity Redress on behalf of survivors of torture. He is urging churches to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, on 26 June.

“The Church has misunderstood Paul badly.” So Steve Chalke argues in his new book, The Lost Message of Paul, which will be published by SPCK on 20 June. “We have read Paul’s words through our own set of assumptions,” Steve says. “We need to go back to his worldview and see things the way he saw them.” Ed Thornton to Steve Chalke about the book at the offices of the charity he runs in central London, the Oasis Charitable Trust. The book is available to pre-order from the Church House Bookshop – go to Chbookshop.co.uk