The Sacred

Tanya Muneera Williams is one half of hip-hop, reggae and spoken work duo, Poetic Pilgrimage. She is an artist, a poet and an activist and regularly appears on BBC Radio 2 to deliver ‘Pause For Thought’. Tanya is of Jamaican heritage and converted to Islam in 2005. In this episode, Tanya talks about her sacred value of allowing alternative stories to be told, her experience moving from Christianity to a spiritual form of Islam and why she still hasn’t found her space within feminism.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian and peace maker. Until recently he was the leader of the Corrymeela community, which is Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organisation. They describe themselves as 'people who seek to engage with the differences of our world... people who disagree with each other on matters of religion, politics and economics and people who wish to name our own complicity in the fractures that damage our societies.' In this episode he spoke about his sacred values of language and encounter, why poetry can help us build our understanding, what keeps him coming back to the story of faith, and how much he loves it when people do unexpected things in situations of conflict.

Mim Skinner is the author of ‘Jailbirds’ which contains stories of her time teaching art in a women’s prison. She currently runs the women’s project for the charity Handcrafted, supporting women to connect to community, housing and recovery through creativity. She is also co-founder of Refuse which works to intercept food which would otherwise go to landfill and do some good with it. In this episode, Mim talks about what she learned from working with female prisoners, the positive influence of living in the North East having grown up in the home counties, and why feminism sometimes struggles to accommodate the most vulnerable women.

Hussein Kesvani is a journalist, editor and producer based in London. He is the Europe editor of MEL Magazine, has written for BuzzFeed, Vice, The Guardian, the New Statesman and The Spectator, and is the author of 'Follow Me, Akhi: The Online World of British Muslims,' available from Hurst Publishers. That book is now available for purchase here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/follow-me-akhi/ In this episode, he discusses his childhood as one of the only Muslim children in his school in Kent, his parents' hidden histories and their expulsion from Uganda in the 1970s, his trajectory from Islam to atheism and back again, and why his online presence is a bit surreal.

Sanderson Jones is a comedian, a social entrepreneur and the co-founder of Sunday Assembly, a worldwide movement of secular congregations. In this episode, he talks about his early experiences of religion, the impact of losing his mum as a child, his sacred value of life and why he feels we all need more meaning and belonging.

Ash Sarkar is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer. She is a Senior Editor at Novara Media, an independent left-wing media organisation, and regularly appears as a pundit on television and radio. In this episode she discusses her sacred value of human life, being a ‘red diaper baby’, rediscovering Islam and her worries that adversarial debates are shaping us in unhealthy ways.

Justin Welby has been the Archbishop of Canterbury since 2013. Prior to this, he served as Bishop of Durham and Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. He spent the first 15 years of his ordained life in Coventry diocese. He was ordained in 1992 after an 11-year career in the oil industry. In this podcast, he talks about the difficulties of leading the global Anglican Communion, how he was dragged reluctantly into ordained ministry and his need to occasionally switch off and watch an Avengers film.

Matthew Taylor is the Chief Executive of the RSA, author of the 2016 Taylor Report review of modern employment commissioned by Theresa May, and panellist on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze. He was formally head of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Tony Blair, Director of IPPR, Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party and a county councillor. This episode covers his sacred values of human rights, his childhood loneliness, why he’s really uncomfortable with conflict and why as an atheist he’s very happy for his daughter to be raised in church.

Rev Sally Hitchener is an Anglican priest and Associate Vicar of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. She was previously co-ordinating Anglican Chaplain and inter-faith advisor at Brunel University, and is the founder of Diverse Church, a charity which supports LGBT+ Christians. In this episode she discusses her sacred value of gift, her experiences as a gay female priest, and why sometimes being an outsider can be a blessing.

David Allen Green is a lawyer and legal commentator. He is a contributing editor at the Financial Times and a former legal correspondent for the New Statesman. He led the defence at the Twitter Joke Trial in 2012 and is now known for his commentary on the legal complexities surrounding Brexit. This interview explores why he became a lawyer instead of a historian, the responsibility that comes with a massive Twitter following and how he tries not to upset religious friends.