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Recommend: Theos think tank and The Sacred podcast

The overall theme of this blog is ‘Light in Public Life‘ (see about) – seeking to bring Christianity into meaningful contact with contemporary public life – and in a sense, I follow in the recent wake of people like the Theos think tank which was launched out of the Bible Society in November 2006 in Westminster. One of the catalysts for the birth of Theos was the need to combat the idea that it was no longer possible to ‘Do God’ in the UK public square, a response borne out in the title of their inaugural publication.

The Sacred PodcastIn the ensuing decade, many things have moved on in the cultural conversation surrounding public faith in the UK, and Theos have moved with the times admirably. One of their most intriguing and accessible recent developments has been The Sacred podcast which, although only several episodes old at the time of writing, seems to have tapped into a very contemporary mood of cultural re-enchantment. Interviewees from a variety of backgrounds are drawn out on issues of meaning and transcendence in a way that few others are attempting and this makes for compulsive and provocative listening.

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Recommended: The Partially Examined Life

I first came across the Partially Examined Life podcast when I was beginning my Masters in Systematic Theology at King’s College London. The core module on the Masters course was called ‘Revelation and Reason’ and the material chronicled the twists and turns that academic theology had taken from the dawn of modernity to the present day. A lot of the figures we studied were either new to me or at best peripherally known from my training in evangelical church settings. Partially Examined Life (or PEL) was a really helpful resource in gaining an understanding of the philosophers and theologians that I was reading. I listened to helpful episodes on figures such as Schleiermacher and Heidegger, and from there delved into dozens of others.

The premise and format of the PEL podcast is a lot of fun; a group of old university friends interact enthusiastically with a set text and argue vigourously – and very homourously too – in a way that old friends are able to. In their tagline they state that they ‘once considered doing philosophy professionally but thought better of it’, and this is reflected in both the intellectual level and the joviality of their conversations. Their core team is often augmented by other guests and experts and although the subject matter can sometimes feel quite abstract or demanding, I don’t think that I’ve heard a boring episode.