Our new four-part series, The Symposium, continues this week with a talk by Dr Nick Spencer, senior fellow of Theos, and a response by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.

The talks were given last month at the event “Public faith, common good, Christian social order,”, organised by St John’s College, Cambridge, in conjunction with the diocese of Ely and the Church Times.

Other speakers at the event, whose talks will appear on the podcast in the coming weeks, include:

Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford

The Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, church historian, former national C of E adviser on ecumenical relations and former Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

The Bishop of Edmonton, Dr Anderson Jeremiah, a globally recognised theologian

Dr Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Associate Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University

Read more about the Symposium here: https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about-us/news-and-research/leading-thinkers-discuss-faith-in-a-fractured-society

Dr Spencer hosts the podcast Reading our Times. His books include:

The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What are we disagreeing about?, written with Hannah Waite (OUP, 2025).

Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion (Oneworld, 2023).

The Evolution of the West: How Christianity has shaped our values (SPCK, 2016)

Dr Williams’s books include:

Solidarity: The work of recognition (Bloomsbury, 2026).

Do We Have the Right to Die? , written with Brenda Hale (Vintage, 2026).

Discovering Christianity: A guide for the curious (SPCK, 2025).

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

A new series, The Symposium, begins this week, with a talk by the Bishop of St Albans, Dr Andrew Rumsey.

The talk was given last month at the event “Public faith, common good, Christian social order,” and was organised by St John’s College, Cambridge, in conjunction with the diocese of Ely and the Church Times.

Other speakers at the event, whose talks will appear on the podcast in the coming weeks, include:

Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford

Dr Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the think tank Theos

Dr Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Associate Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University

Read more about the Symposium here: https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about-us/news-and-research/leading-thinkers-discuss-faith-in-a-fractured-society

Dr Rumsey’s books include:

Parish: An Anglican theology of place (SCM Press)

English Grounds: A pastoral journal (SCM Press)

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

Tributes have been paid to the journalist and broadcaster Edward Stourton, who died this month, aged 68.

Paul Vallely writes in the Church Times this week: “Ed’s faith strengthened his journalism because it gave him a deeper insight into the truth. There is no finer exemplar of the vocation of journalism than Edward Stourton.”

Last year, Edward Stourton delivered the Sir Tony Baldry Lecture in Winchester Cathedral as part of the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. The lecture examined how truth can survive in a digital age, and explained why truth-telling still matters.

“Technology can create challenges as well as opportunities,” he said. “Today’s digital landscape offers us an abundance — a superabundance — of sources for information, something unimaginable in the 1940s, and, indeed, in the three-television-channel world I joined in the 1970s. If we’re offered several versions of the truth, it is only natural to prefer the version which best fits our views and prejudices, and that’s a real challenge facing us in what’s sometimes called the mainstream media. So, how do we meet that challenge?”

Read Paul Vallely's article here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/31-july/comment/columnists/paul-vallely-for-edward-stourton-journalism-was-a-vocation

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium, Mgr Luc Terlinden, is interviewed by James Macintyre, staff writer for the Church Times.

The interview was recorded on Sunday in a chapel at York Minster. Archbishop Terlinden had been invited by the Archbishop of York to be an ecumenical observer at the meeting of the General Synod in York, after he had invited Archbishop Cottrell, to Mechelen, to a major international conference last year.

Archbishop Terlinden speaks about his impressions of the Synod, what the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches can learn from one another, his hopes for world peace, and his assessment of Pope Leo XIV’s first year.

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the Rector of St Andrew’s, Ramallah, the Revd Fadi Diab, returns to the podcast (he was first interviewed in 2024). He speaks to James Macintyre, staff writer at the Church Times.

Fr Diab is on a visit to the UK, where, last week, he presented to the Methodist Conference the 2025 document Kairos II, A Moment of Truth: Faith in a time of genocide, which he co-wrote in response to events in Gaza after the atrocities in Israel on 7 October 2023. The document calls for an urgent global Christian response.

This weekend, he will be in York for the General Synod, where he has been invited to attend and speak with members about the situation in the Holy Land for Palestinian Christians, and the wider situation in the region.

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

Paul Vallely and Nick Spencer join Ed Thornton on the podcast this week to discuss how Andy Burnham’s Roman Catholicism influences his politics.

Nick Spencer writes in the Analysis section of this week’s Church Times about what kind of religious politician Mr Burnham is, and what faith groups can expect from him once he enters 10 Downing Street, as he is expected to do later this month. Paul Vallely, in his column this week, finds echoes of papal encyclicals in Mr Burnham’s speech in Manchester on Monday. “Manchesterism, it seems, is the new word for Catholic social teaching,” he argues.

Read their articles here:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/3-july/comment/analysis/analysis-andy-burnham-s-faith-is-politically-safe

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/3-july/comment/columnists/paul-vallely-burnhams-manchesterism-echoes-papal-encyclicals

Paul Vallely is a writer, broadcaster, and consultant who specialises in philanthropy, business ethics, and international development. He is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. He writes a weekly column for the Church Times. He is the editor of The New Politics: Catholic social teaching for the twenty-first century (SCM Press). His most recent books are Live Aid: The definitive 40-year story (New Modern) (Books, 5 December 2025) and Philanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg (Bloomsbury) (Books, 11 September 2020, Podcast, 17 September 2020).

Dr Nick Spencer is senior fellow at Theos, and the host of the podcast Reading our Times. His books include The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What are we disagreeing about? (OUP) (Books, 10 October 2025) (written with Hannah Waite) and The Mighty and the Almighty: How political leaders do God (editor) (Biteback) (Books, 16 June 2017).

Podcast edited by Katie Bartlett.

Picture credit: Alamy

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

The writer and broadcaster Chris Bowlby is intereviewed this week about his book No Complacency: Life, death, football, and the cathedral on the hill.

The book is published by Herne Books and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £18.

From the publisher’s description: “When Chris Bowlby’s son Ewan was diagnosed with a brain tumour aged 17, you might have thought football would be the last thing on their minds. But in the following decade in which Ewan faced growing threats to his health, the love of football they shared seemed to grow in importance. It was a kind of thread, defiantly holding some kind of normal life together, and a passion that prompted fascinating discussion about why a sport could matter so much.

“After Ewan’s death from cancer in 2022 [Gazette, 3 March 2023], Chris faced a choice. He wondered whether his lifelong love of football might fade. But gradually he found a way of including grief in a return to life, all of life. He understood as never before how much football had meant to him, how it had shaped the world he had lived through, and how it could now help him cope. Yet there was tension too. Was he now more aware of how the modern game might be leaving its humanity behind?

“This book explores that experience, ranging from top-level football to community clubs, the intensely local to the global, the women’s game as well as the men’s. It has football at its heart but is about much more than sport.”

Ewan Bowlby’s book, Borrowed Stories: Facing cancer with culture — from Breaking Bad to The Divine Comedy, was published last year (Features, 12 September 2025).

https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781917362115/borrowed-stories

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/12-september/features/features/facing-cancer-with-culture-end-of-life-solace-in-storytelling

Chris Bowlby has written the Viewpoint column in the 19 June edition of the Church Times. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/19-june/comment/columnists/viewpoint-with-chris-bowlby-football-and-religion-can-benefit-each-other

Chris Bowlby was for many years on the staff of the BBC, where he made documentaries on a wide range of subjects including payday lending and football, profiles of leading football club owners, and the history of the Berlin venue for the 2006 World Cup final. He has also been a regular columnist for the BBC History magazine, a foreign correspondent for the Independent, and writes obituaries for The Times.

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

Peter Stanford returns to the podcast to talk about his new book, Gaudí: God’s architect, published to mark the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death. The book is published Hodder & Stoughton at £30 (Church Times Bookshop £24). https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781399811811/gaud%C3%AD?vc=CT705

The writer Tobias Jones says: “In daring to trace the complex connections between Gaudí’s religious faith and his famous buildings, this is an enriching, nuanced book.”

Read an extract from the book in the 5 June edition of the Church Times: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/5-june/features/features/antoni-gaud%C3%AD-architect-of-his-own-destiny

Peter Stanford is an award-winning writer, journalist, broadcaster, and campaigner. He is a former editor of The Catholic Herald. His previous books include If These Stones Could Talk (Podcast. 14 October 2021; Books, 26 November 2021) and Martin Luther (Podcast, 13 April 2017; Books, 28 July 2017).

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On this edition of the podcast, Canon Angela Tilby talks about her new book, Good Faith: Why England needs its Church (Hodder & Stoughton), which is available to buy at the Church House Bookshop. https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781399801638/good-faith

Canon Tilby is Canon Emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and a Canon of Honour at Portsmouth Cathedral. She is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, as well as a weekly columnist for the Church Times.

The book “seeks to reclaim what is unique about the Church of England — a church which claims to be ‘part of’ the one, holy Catholic Church — and its role in our national life, and how a deeper understanding of Christian faith can still be passed on through it to the English people”.

Picture credit: KT Bruce

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, the singer, composer, and conductor Joanna Forbes L’Estrange is interviewed by Madeleine Davies.

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange talks about how she developed a love of singing as a child, and why she believes that singing in primary schools is “absolutely vital”. This is especially needed in state schools, she says, where there is often less of a culture of singing than in independent schools.

“There have been lots of musicians over the decades who have recognised this need, but still somehow there needs to be a seismic culture shift,” she says. “It’s somehow convincing the people who make the big decisions that singing provision in schools is absolutely vital.”

She delivered a keynote speech this month at the annual conference of the Choir Schools’ Association. Read more in Madeleine’s report in the Church Times this week. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/15-may/news/uk/state-schools-need-support-to-improve-music-provision-choir-schools-association-hears

https://www.joannaforbeslestrange.com/

Tickets are on sale for the Church Times Festival of Faith and Music, on 10 October at Southwark Cathedral: https://faithandmusic.hymnsam.co.uk/buy-tickets/

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to www.churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader