The Corrymeela Podcast

A brief trailer from the Corrymeela Podcast’s interview with The Edge, the legendary guitarist of the equally legendary Irish band U2. The full episode will be online — and in your podcast feeds — on the morning of Thursday 25th March, 2021.

We talk to the brilliant Claire Mitchell, a sociologist and writer from Belfast about Irishness, Britishness, border crossing, the unexpected advantages of a charismatic evangelical background, observations on religion from outside of religion, her grandmothers, and being a Lundy.

As always you can read the full transcript and find some reflection questions for personal or group discussion.

Claire Mitchell’s website has links to her books and articles.

Our fourth episode is an interview with Professor Anthony Reddie who considers Britishness, Belonging and Brexit through a Black Liberationist Theological point of view. Incorporating stories of his working class upbringing in Bradford, his parents' part of the Windrush generation, and his interest in both theology and history, this interview is wide ranging and informative.

As always we have provided a full transcript and some reflection questions for your personal or group use.

Copies of Prof Anthony Reddie’s book Theologising Brexit will be available in paperback from March 31st 2021 from Routledge. A link to his academic pages at Oxford is here.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama interviews Rev. Dr. Johnston McMaster, who has spent decades - both as an ordained minister and as a writer and lecturer - considering the overlap between politics, history and religion in the divided loyalties on both sides of the border in Ireland.

Full copies of the transcript — together with four reflection questions for groups or individuals — can be found through this link.

Copies of Johnson McMaster’s new book on the Churches and Partition can be found by contacting the publisher, The Junction, through this link.

For episode 2 of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks with the poet Gail McConnell, whose forthcoming collection The Sun Is Open considers an archive-box of her father’s writings, clippings, poems and pamphlets. He was murdered by the IRA in 1984. Gail also speaks about creaturely poetry, parenthood, living with loss, and identity. Full transcript of the conversation, and group discussion questions are all available here. Gail McConnell teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University in Belfast. The collection of poetry discussed — The Sun Is Open — will be released by Penned in the Margins in the Autumn of 2021.

On this episode of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks homeplace, religion, British-Irish politics, and leadership with former President of Ireland, Dr. Mary McAleese. This episode is filled with story, insight and the complicated art of compromise and negotiation. You can download the discussion question and episode transcript here. President McAleese’s memoir Here’s the Story is published by Penguin.

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives a preview of season 1 of the Corrymeela Podcast, a season considering Irishness and Britishness in 2021: a year with Covid; a year marking the centenary of the partition of Ireland; and the first year of Brexit. For all our interviews, we asked our guests some 'Very Short Story Questions' - questions you might want to ask yourself, or people you know. You can find these questions here. (We don't broadcast all the answers the guest gives to these, just one or two.)