The Sacred

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.

Christina Patterson is a writer and broadcaster. A former chief executive of the Poetry Society and columnist for The Independent, she now writes for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Daily Mail about culture, society, politics and books. She is a regular commentator on radio and TV news programmes and a regular guest on Sky News. She is the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart which you can buy here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Not-Falling-Apart/dp/1786492768/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=U

This episode covers her childhood informed by an ethic of public service, gaining and losing a fundamentalist faith, writing personally as a columnist and the sacramental echoes in wine and kettle chips.

James Cary is a comedy writer. He has written sitcoms for BBC TV and radio, including Miranda, Bluestone 42, Think the Unthinkable and Hut 33. He is the author of Writing That Sitcom, Death by Civilisation and most recently The Sacred Art of Joking. He is also a member of General Synod.

We spoke about how he doesn't feel fully at home in either his church tribe or his comedy tribe, why he doesn't mind that his socially conservative views offend some people, and the importance of defending the freedom to makes jokes — because they make us fully human.

Shadi Hamid is a political scientist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in their Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy. Hes also a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He's the author most recently of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World (https://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Exceptionalism-Struggle-Islam-Reshaping/dp/1250135133/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1447698723&sr=1-1), and the co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam (https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Political-Islam-Shadi-Hamid/dp/0190649208/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=).

This episode explores his sacred value of respecting democratic outcomes, why representational intersectional politics is making being a public Muslim a bit more complex, his love for Christian political theologian Abraham Kuyper, and his contrarian tendencies.

Ariane Sherine is a comedy writer, journalist and in 2009 was creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign. She was written comedy for the BBC, Channel 4 and beyond, journalism for The Spectator, The Guardian, Telegraph and Sunday Times, and is the author of The Atheists Guide to Christmas and Talk Yourself Better: a Confused Person’s guide to Therapy, Self-help and Counselling. We spoke about a traumatic abortion experience, her struggles with mental health, what has changed since the bus campaign 10 years ago and why she now doesn't mind that her daughter calls herself a Christian.

This episode contains themes some listeners may find upsetting. Please listen with care.

Nick Payne is an award winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays 'Constellations', and 'If There is I Haven’t Found it Yet' have been performed in London and New York and his series 'Wanderlust' was recently screened on BBC 1 and Netflix. Nick adapted Julian Barnes's The Sense Of An Ending for BBC Films which was released in 2017 with Jim Broadbent.Jake Gyllenhaal will star in Nick's play A Life which will run at The Public Theater on Broadway from January to March 2019.

In this episode he discusses why publically funded arts are sacred to him, the difficulty of writing about religious belief as an agnostic, and why he thinks the theatre is vital for creating space to reflect on what kind of society we want to be.

There is no full episode of The Sacred as we are taking a break over Christmas. Instead, here's a short message from Elizabeth about dealing with difference in our very own homes and some announcements about next year's exciting line-up.