St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Institute discusses the notion of ethical business and how the global financial crisis has impacted on the need for corporations to act ethically. Interview with Leo Martin, Director and Co-Founder of GoodCorporation.

Something understood - final reflections - part iii. Please note that this session was very interactive with lots of audience participation. It also refers to several poems in great detail - these poems were on handouts that the participants had been given. George Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he’s having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. Mark Oakley is Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, overseeing the arts and learning programmes at the cathedral. He writes regularly for the Church Times and The Tablet and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 4. His latest, bestselling, book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (Canterbury Press) was published last year to great acclaim. Recorded 14 October 2017.

Love took my hand - part ii. Please note that this session was very interactive with lots of audience participation. It also refers to several poems in great detail - these poems were on handouts that the participants had been given. George Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he’s having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. Mark Oakley is Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, overseeing the arts and learning programmes at the cathedral. He writes regularly for the Church Times and The Tablet and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 4. His latest, bestselling, book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (Canterbury Press) was published last year to great acclaim. Recorded 14 October 2017.

Part i - Lost in a humble way - introducing George Herbert. George Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he’s having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. Mark Oakley is Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, overseeing the arts and learning programmes at the cathedral. He writes regularly for the Church Times and The Tablet and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 4. His latest, bestselling, book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (Canterbury Press) was published last year to great acclaim. Recorded 14 October 2017.

Mark is the earliest of the Gospels, the one written closest to Jesus’ lifetime. It is short, urgent, passionate and dramatic and reads a little like a front-line despatch from Christ’s life and death. Often we hear the Gospels in short sections, but it can be a revelation to read – or hear – the whole of the story at once. David Suchet; one of the best-known and best-loved actors of his generation, reads the Gospel of Mark. Recorded 28 March 2017.

Coleridge is, famously, one of the great Romantic poets, a group renowned for their wild lives and living outside respectable society. A brilliant and innovative poet, Coleridge was also, perhaps surprisingly, a man of profound faith and insight into the Christian life. Malcolm Guite, poet, priest, theologian and song-writer, explores Coleridge’s life, faith and work, and what we might learn from him for our own lives of faith. Recorded 7 February 2017.

Jesus’ teaching changed the world, yet his sayings can often seem cryptic and hard to understand. Keith Ward, one of the most distinguished theologians at work today, has spent a lifetime studying the Gospels. He finds the figures of speech and images that Jesus used are all ways of expressing and evoking the self-giving love of God, supremely manifested in Jesus’ own life.

Many of our everyday encounters in the world are touched by the divine, if only we were aware of it. Donna Lazenby says that we may find it easier to experience God in the great moments of our lives, but God often finds a humbler dwelling-place. Can we learn to be alert to the presence of God in small moments of unexpected joy and human encounter, and also to hear God’s voice in the world’s cries of protest against alienation and injustice? 2 July 2017.

We live in a time when the language around immigration has become more vociferous, and the Black Lives Matter movement, originating in America, has sharpened debate about race, ethnicity and justice. Anthony Reddie says that while God is universal, all our theology is contextual and we need to hear each other’s experiences in order to have a fuller picture of God, and most of all we need to listen to voices which bring news of God beyond the traditional power structures of the church and Christendom. 4 June 2017.

We’re often told that faith and science are at war with one another, and we have to choose one or the other. Alister McGrath says it’s time to consider another way looking at these two great cultural forces: what if science and faith might actually enrich each other? What if, together, they give us a deeper and more satisfying understanding of life?Alister McGrath is Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University and the author of numerous academic and theological works including the best selling The Dawkins Delusion (SPCK 2007). 7 May 2017.