Holy Smoke

By The SpectatorSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Christianity Philosophy Religion

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Holy Smoke episodes

June 29, 2021 The tyranny of bad hymns
Christian music lovers of all denominations – Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, whatever – know only too well that they enter their local churches at their peril. In this week's episode I talk to the irrepressible Lois Letts, a wedding and funeral organist for C of E churches in rural Herefordshire, about bad hymns. The funerals are appropriate, since when I first met Lois she wrote obituaries for the Times. Pity the wet vicar who tries to force her to play a bad hymn! We don't mince our words: our discussion is a euphemism-free zone and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And there's a musical coda, a treat in store for those many Holy Smoke listeners who are devoted to the memory of Dame Clara Butt.
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26 min
June 09, 2021 The Christian mental health crisis
Is the mental health of Christians beginning to collapse under the strain not just of Covid and its effect on worship but also the bottomless contempt of progressive ideology for religious belief? This week's Holy Smoke is a conversation with theologian Dr Gavin Ashenden about a crisis of morale that is robbing some Christians of the will to live. One former churchgoer told me last week that he'd be perfectly happy not to wake up the next morning – and I knew exactly how he felt. But in conclusion Gavin suggests a way of breaking out of this existential nightmare. So, as they say on the BBC, if you're affected by any of the issues raised in this programme, make sure to listen through to the end.
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35 min
May 28, 2021 How Biden's cardinals are trying to shut down free discussion
America's Catholic bishops are furiously divided among themselves this week, after a liberal faction led by the Biden loyalists Cardinals Cupich of Chicago and Wilton Gregory of Washington tried to stop them discussing the question of whether the radically pro-choice president of the United States should be allowed to receive Holy Communion.

As I say in the new episode of Holy Smoke, It looks as if most of the 290 active bishops are ready to enforce such a ban – goaded by Joe Biden's increasingly hardline support for completely unrestricted abortions, and his plans to remove constitutional protection for pro-life public employees.

The controversy is particularly nerve-wracking for the US bishops because they don't know where the Pope stands on this question. Francis is a big fan of the current Argentine President, Alberto Fernandez, who has recently legalised abortion in the country. When the Pope and the President met in Rome this month, the subject apparently didn't even come up.

For more thought on the wider ramifications of this crisis – and it's a big crisis – tune in.
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17 min
May 13, 2021 The last legacy of the Soviet Union
Today’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the increasingly brutal bullying and silencing of people – especially Christians – who hold the ‘wrong’ opinions on controversial topics. A culture of censorship is becoming ever more deeply embedded in public institutions not just in Britain but also throughout Europe.

There is a direct link between Europe's increasingly fanatical attempts to police public opinion and the former Soviet bloc. My guest Paul Coleman, executive director of free-speech legal advocates ADF International, explains that when Moscow and its satellites were involved in drawing up international human rights legislation after the Second World War, they insisted that it should include the criminalisation of speech.

One wonders whether Boris Johnson and his ministers are aware of this and, if so, whether they care. As Coleman points out, although European bodies are hunting down heretics with predictable relish, the behaviour of the heavily politicised police forces of post-Brexit Britain is in some respects even worse.
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34 min
May 03, 2021 The magical power of charisma – and why the Churches are ignoring it
The subject of this week’s Holy Smoke is charisma, which you might think is one of the most hackneyed and devalued words in the language. But its popularity is no accident. ‘Charisma’ is shorthand for one of the most revolutionary – and useful – concepts in intellectual history.
The word ‘charisma’ is taken from St Paul, who employed it to describe the gifts that descended on the first Christians at Pentecost. Indeed, Paul may have invented the word. But it was the tortured polymath Weber who suggested that the sudden appearance of men and women who can apparently perform miracles, real or metaphorical, has transformed almost every human society.
My guest today is the diplomatic historian Professor John Charmley, whose unflattering biography of Winston Churchill divided opinion when it was published in 1993 – as it was intended to. Professor Charmley is now Pro-Vice Chancellor for academic strategy at St Mary's University, Twickenham, a Catholic university which he wants to root even more firmly in its faith and heritage. He’s certainly not the sort of hand-wringing academic paralysed by colonial guilt. I think you’ll enjoy this episode.
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39 min
April 12, 2021 The Greek Orthodox ancestry of Prince Philip
What were Prince Philip's religious beliefs? The Duke of Edinburgh had Orthodox Christian ancestry, but how was he drawn to its traditions, was he influenced by the Queen's faith, and why was he critical of Catholicism? Damian Thompson speaks to Gavin Ashenden, chaplain to the Queen from 2008 to 2017.
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39 min
April 07, 2021 What the police's Good Friday disruption tells us about post-Christian Britain
The invasion of the sanctuary of a Polish church in Balham on Good Friday by the Metropolitan police was not only a shocking event but also a sinister piece of history. It can't be interpreted as a premeditated attack on Christianity – but it's evidence of the utter irrelevance of Britain's Christian heritage to the culture of liberal bureaucracy that is fast replacing it.In this week’s Holy Smoke episode, Dr Gavin Ashenden and I talk about the blundering insensitivity of the police officer who marched into the sanctuary of Christ the King Church during the veneration of the Cross without apparently understanding anything of what the ceremony signified.

But equally unsettling, in its way, has been the relative silence of Christian leaders when confronted by this outrageous disruption of a service on the grounds that the congregation were not observing social distancing procedures – something that isn't immediately clear from the video footage. In my opinion, Anglican and Catholic bishops are just as passive in the face of liberal bureaucracy as any heavy-handed police officer. It's no coincidence that today's police chiefs and senior clergy use roughly the same vocabulary to express many of the same dogmatic platitudes.

Gavin and I cover a lot of ground in this episode, including Boris Johnson's extraordinary Easter Sunday address to the nation in which he appeared to be professing his own Christian faith. Was this perhaps a veiled response to Friday's public relations setback – one that would have been a full-scale disaster if the police had invaded any religious ceremony held by a recognised ethnic minority? But, of course, that would never have happened.
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35 min
April 01, 2021 The Passion chorale: the story of an extraordinary tune
As we all know, it’s safe for three people to sing hymns in church, but any more than three is absolutely deadly. Those are the rules as set down by the Church of England, and as a result no one in Anglican services (or Catholic ones) will hear the glorious Good Friday Hymn 'O Sacred Head’ tomorrow in the four-part harmony it requires.

But if you stick on a CD of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, you'll hear four separate harmonisations of perhaps the most haunting hymn tune ever written. The Cantor of St Thomas’s Leipzig was obsessed with this tune, originally a popular song with excruciating lyrics by the composer Hans Leo Hassler. Bach’s older contemporary Dietrich Buxtehude had fun with it, as did Paul Simon – enchantingly, in his 1974 song ‘America’.

This episode of Holy Smoke tells the story of the piece, and reveals some of the miraculous things Bach did with it in his other settings. He has a way of dive-bombing a movement with it that can make you jump out of your seat the first time you hear it. Or, in the case of its guest appearance in the Christmas Oratorio, dance round the room.

I hope you enjoy this episode. But be warned: you’ll also hear the podcast host attempting to perform one of Bach’s chorale preludes on the piano in his bedroom. Fortunately it only lasts two minutes, so you just have time to nip out and make a cup of tea.
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28 min
March 25, 2021 The mystery of Pope Francis's infallibly good taste in classical music
In this week's Holy Smoke podcast I suggest that Pope Francis has a more profound appreciation of classical music than any of his predecessors. I've been saying this for years and everyone assumes that it’s a wind-up or that I'm confusing him with Benedict XVI. Not so.

The Pope doesn't just enjoy listening to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner: he has strong views on the best recordings of their work, and very sound views they are too. You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear the details, but here's a taster: Francis not only recognises Wilhelm Furtwängler as the supreme interpreter of Wagner's Ring cycle, but he asserts the superiority of the live 1950 La Scala recordings to those taped for Italian radio in 1953. And he’s right.

Fortunately all the recordings that receive the papal imprimatur are out of copyright, so you’ll hear extracts from the performances. And I reveal what members of the Sistine Chapel choir told me about Francis’s obsession with an opera whose symbolism has always made Catholics feel uneasy…
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35 min
March 10, 2021 Is Jordan Peterson about to move from Jung to Jesus?
Is Dr Jordan Peterson about to convert to Christianity? If so, it’s a big deal. The earnest but sardonic Canadian psychologist is already the most effective advocate for the moral precepts of Christianity in the English-speaking media. But, until now, his penetrating exposition of the Bible has been inspired more by Jungian symbolism than by actual religious belief.

That may be about to change, albeit not in the happiest of circumstances. In recent months Peterson has suffered from a combination of medical conditions that have left him in wretched pain, both physical and psychological. This has left him wondering whether it’s time to submit to the dogmatic assertions of orthodox Christianity. He explains his complex reasoning in an extraordinary podcast, in which he presents himself to his friend Jonathan Pageau, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, as something close to a broken man. He certainly sounds and looks like one. The contrast with the Jordan Peterson who politely humiliated the sneering Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News is excruciating.

Peterson will survive his crisis, I’m sure. Whether he will convert is, of course, impossible to say; he doesn’t know himself. But my guest this week, Dr Gavin Ashenden, is well qualified to describe his dilemma. Gavin was himself a disciple of Jung before what he describes as an encounter with demons led him back to Christianity. He makes the point that, even if Peterson doesn’t take the leap of faith, he has already led more people into that faith than any number of dim-witted or intellectually cowardly bishops. Please don’t miss this episode.
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45 min