All Things Considered

Delyth Liddell in conversation with Grammy Award winning singer and songwriter Matt Redman. Matt is the writer of some of the world’s most popular worship songs and regularly leads churches across the globe in worship.

This summer Matt Redman will release his twentieth album, “Coming Back to The Heart," which revisits songs written or co-written by him over the last 25 years. He shares insights into these songs and reflects on his strong partnership with his wife Beth, with whom he has written songs, preached and planted churches, alongside raising five children. As a young man he was a worship leader for Soul Survivor church in Watford, a church which has recently been in the spotlight for serious safeguarding failures. Matt discusses his documentary ‘Let there be Light;’ the harmful behaviour of the leader Mike Pilavachi, and the bravery of abuse survivors.

On Sunday 26th May Llandaff Cathedral will host a service to remember people in the LGBTQ+ community who have suffered exclusion from Christian communities because of their sexuality or gender identity. The service is organised LGBTQ+ Christian Charity OneBodyOneFaith. In this week's 'All Things Considered' Delyth Liddell speaks to the charity's co-chair, Father Jarel Robinson-Brown.

Jarel Robinson-Brown is vicar of St German's Church, Adamsdown, Cardiff but he hails from London. He was raised in West London by Jamaican grandparents and studied in Cambridge to become a Methodist minister, serving as an Ordinand at Clare College. In 2021 he left the Methodist church and began the journey to be ordained as an Anglican Priest. Jarel says himself he’s a person who crosses many boundaries, calling himself “a Black, Queer British Christian minister of Jamaican and Cuban heritage.” His writing explores racism and homophobia in the church and how to better address these issues. He is the Martin Luther King Fellow at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, and his research interests are early Christian history, Patristics and Egyptian Late Antiquity.

Roy Jenkins talks to former nun Catherine Coldstream, who has recently published a fascinating, challenging and highly praised memoir of her former life in a Carmelite monastery.

Following the death of her father, Catherine Coldstream abandoned her musician's life in Paris and sought spiritual solace in a monastery, and found what she thought was a vocation for life as a Carmelite nun. She was only in her mid-20s Yet on a rainy night 12 years later she would try to escape from the community which had once seemed idyllic. By that time it was riven between two factions, one for maintaining the old traditions at all costs, and the other for embracing the Catholic church’s modernising concern for individual welfare.

In recent years Catherine has been a teacher of religion and ethics, and in this conversation she reflects on both the good and the bad parts of her experience in the monastery to which she gives the fictional name of 'Akenside'.

While attention is understandably focussed on the latest horrors of the Gaza-Israel conflict, it’s easy to forget that in Ukraine and dozens of other countries, people are also being forced from their homes, seeing communities destroyed, and living in daily fear. In other places, the memories of much earlier atrocities continue to shape lives.

It’s the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda which killed 800,000 people in 100 days in 1994.

The UK parliament faces yet another round of votes on the government’s plans to send asylum seekers there, proposals hailed as a means of protecting borders, deterring people without legitimate claims, and fighting the traffickers.

And widely condemned as inflicting unnecessary suffering, breaching international agreements, and incurring huge expense. while working with a country with a far from perfect record on human rights.

On the day two years ago when the plans were first announced, Roy Jenkins was interviewing a survivor of that genocide in 1994. He was in Wales, visiting a couple who’d kept in touch with him since he was in an orphanage.

Today we’re repeating that conversation with Jean-Pierre Sibomana, who was maimed in an explosion which killed his mother. He’s faced many struggles, but that devastating event was eventually to help set a vision for his life – he’s now a disability rights champion.

Recent figures suggest that Christianity is now one of the most widely persecuted religions in the world.

Dr Bablin Molik holds a PhD in Biology from Cardiff University with a specialism in Glaucoma. Today she is CEO of the charity Sight Cymru and Lord Mayor of Cardiff. She speaks with Azim Ahmed about her her role as Lord Mayor and her work advocating for the blind and partially sighted.

Bablin moved to Wales from Bangladesh at the age of six and went on to excel in her schooling here. She’s dedicated much of her working life to campaigning for those with impaired sight and in her role as Lord Mayor her nominated charity is UCAN Productions, a performance and creative arts charity supporting children who are blind and partially sighted.

During the month of Ramadan, Bablin shares the challenges of fasting while being a CEO and Lord Mayor, but also how her resilience and compassion is rooted in her Muslim faith.

This week the Media Bill has been scrutinised and debated in the House of Lords. The aim is of the bill is to reform decades-old legislation for Public Service Broadcasters (including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and S4C), but in its current form it will remove the requirement for specific genres of programmes on religion, arts and science.

With religious programming already in decline, some groups are concerned that this will deal a serious blow to faith broadcasting. Others argue it’s a necessary step, giving broadcasters greater flexibility and reflecting a post-Christian Britain.

What might happen if there isn’t a a requirement to make programmes about religion and belief? With a rapidly changing religious landscape in Britain, do current faith programmes meet audience needs? To what extent does religious broadcasting matter?

Azim Ahmed is joined by four guests to explore the issues; Tony Stoller, Chair of the Sandford St. Martin Trust, Tim Pemberton, Head of Religion and Ethics for BBC Audio, Kathryn Riddick from Humanists UK and journalist and broadcaster Remona Aly.

Two students from a school in Bristol were fatally stabbed last month – and the one person many journalists sought out for comment was a Baptist minister. Not because he knew them, but because he heads the academy trust that their school belongs to – along with 53 other schools across the country.

Today's guest is Steve Chalke – activist and writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur – founded the Oasis Trust nearly 40 years ago. Today it links churches and other community groups in challenging injustice and inequality. Its initiatives range from the big schools network to specialist neighbourhood debt advice, job training, mental health drop-ins for children and young people, and much more. It also works internationally in housing and education and healthcare.

Steve Chalke has never shied away from controversy, not least among the evangelical Christians who nurtured him – he’s been outspoken in his defence of minority groups and some traditional ways of understandings the Bible.

Azim Ahmed visits one of Wales' most fascinating religious communities, now celebrating 50 years since it was founded in a peaceful corner of Carmarthenshire, near the village of Llanpumpsaint. This monastery and temple complex is devoted to worship and to service to both animal and human lives. Boasting no fewer than three elephants, the Community of the Many Names of God was established back in 1973 by a former Sri Lankan florist based in London, Guru Sri Subramanium. The Guru came to Wales guided by a vision. From unpromising beginnings - he had spotted a derelict farm for sale in the small ads of the Farmers Weekly magazine - the Guru built up a temple complex that is nowadays home to some twenty permanent members, and many more lay people and devotees. Still guided by the late Guru's vision, Skanda Vale attracts many thousands of worshippers annually, and is home not only to a human community - it is also home to numerous animals, including no fewer than three elephants!

https://www.skandavale.org/

This weekend the Right Reverend Dorrien Davies has been enthroned as the 130th Bishop of St Davids in a cathedral which is the mother church of a large diocese covering the west Wales counties of Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. It’s a part of Wales that Bishop Dorrien knows well – having studied at Lampeter, served as a curate in Llanelli and subsequently as parish priest in Llanfihangel Ystrad Aeron and at St Dogmaels before being made a Residentiary Canon at St Davids Cathedral in 2010. Five years ago he was appointed to a senior role as Archdeacon of Carmarthen; he’s well-known and popular in the diocese.

He succeeds the Rt Revd Joanna Penberthy who retired last year following a lengthy period of sick leave. Her time in office wasn’t without controversy following a tweet for which she subsequently apologised in which she said “Never, never, never trust a Tory.”

Bishop Dorrien was born and brought up in Abergwili near Carmarthen which is also where Llys Esgob – the Bishop’s Palace – is situated. That’s where Jonathan Thomas recorded a conversation earlier this week, covering a wide-range of topics and issues including climate change, historic churches, the management of differing opinions over same-sex blessings and the role of the Church in an election year. He also recalls growing up in the shadow of the Bishop's Palace in Abergwili, and his consecration service as a bishop in Bangor Cathedral last weekend.