The Church Times Podcast

Last week, the Festival of Preaching welcomed around 300 clergy and lay preachers. The event brought together inspiring talks and workshop from well-known preachers from around the world.

In today’s episode, we’re bringing you one of the lectures from the festival: Colin Heber-Percy asks: Is writing a sermon like caging a bird?

The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy is Team Vicar of Savernake in Salisbury diocese.

He is the author of Lost in the Forest: Finding joy in losing your way (Octopus Books £10.99 (Church Times Bookshop £9.89). You can read our review here: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/11-september/books-arts/book-reviews/book-review-lost-in-the-forest-notes-on-not-belonging-from-the-english-countryside-by-colin-heber-percy

He is also a writer and screenwriter, and has written numerous articles on faith and film, the philosophy and theology of cinema.

Read this week’s featured headlines here:

• Muslim scholar in awards débâcle deserves apology from Lambeth Palace, says Moderator of Church of Pakistan: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/news/uk/muslim-scholar-in-awards-d%C3%A9b%C3%A2cle-deserves-apology-from-lambeth-palace-says-moderator-of-church-of-pakistan
• End ICE deal, say faith leaders: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/news/world/end-ice-deal-say-faith-leaders
• Churches spear US lawsuits: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/news/world/churches-spearhead-us-lawsuits
• Good Money Week: Better ways to spend – from housing schemes to microfinance:
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/features/features/good-money-get-a-home-to-call-your-own
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/features/features/good-money-from-small-seeds-to-nurturing-growth

If you enjoyed today’s talk, you can also listen to Colin Heber-Percy in conversation with Dr Andrew Rumsey, now Bishop of St Albans, from the 2023 Festival of Faith and Literature: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/14-april/audio-video/podcast/colin-heber-percy-in-conversation-with-andrew-rumsey-at-the-festival-of-faith-and-literature

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

Five years ago, the Revd Marcus Walker co-founded the Save the Parish campaign. The Revd Dr Stephen Cherry, former parish priest, cathedral canon, and college dean, sat down recently with Fr Walker in the vestry of his church to find out what the issues are and to dig a little deeper into the theology that is behind the concerns.

Among the topics discussed:

• When and why Fr Walker first decided that the parish needed to be saved.
• Why he believes that stipendiary clergy are so vital.
• How he responds to critics who say that Save the Parish is standing in the way of initiatives to deal with the Church of England’s attendance crisis.
• What would success look like for Save the Parish?

Fr Walker is the Rector of St Bartholomew the Great, in the City of London. He is chairman of the Save the Parish network and a member of the General Synod. He is a monthly columnist for the Critic Magazine, and an occasional columnist for The Times, the Telegraph, and the Spectator.

Dr Cherry is an Emeritus Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. His most recent book, Unforgivable? Exploring the limits of forgiveness, is published by Bloomsbury. Read our review here. He presents the podcast Encounters with King’s College Chapel: https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/encounters-kings-college-chapel-podcast

This episode is produced by Neil Koenig.

Picture credit: Geoff Crawford/Church Times

Stories mentioned at the end of the podcast:

• Opponents welcome Commons’ rejection of ‘dangerous and unworkable’ assisted-dying Bill: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/18-september/news/uk/opponents-welcome-commons-rejection-of-dangerous-and-unworkable-assisted-dying-legislation
• Church in Wales Governing Body: Detailed paper outlines future funding issues: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/18-september/news/uk/church-in-wales-governing-body-detailed-paper-outlines-future-funding-issues
• Interview with Jackie Pullinger: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/18-september/features/features/lifetime-given-to-prayer-protection-and-hope

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

“We don’t do God,” the former government communications director Alastair Campbell once told an American reporter who asked Tony Blair about religion. The phrase has come to signify the idea that, in the UK, religion should be kept out of public life.

On the podcast this week, staff writer James Macintyre sits down with Alastair Campbell at his home in north London to talk about his enduring interest in faith. Their conversation covers:

• What he meant by saying “We don’t do God.”
• Why he is proud to be a “pro-faith atheist”
• His private Bible studies with the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at Lambeth Palace
• Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on humanity and AI, Magnifica Humanitas

Today, Campbell remains a well-known public figure. He co-presents the hugely popular podcast The Rest is Politics, is Editor-at-Large of The New World, and campaigns on mental health.

He is the author of a number of books, which include:

• But What Can I Do? Why politics has gone wrong and how you can help fix it (Penguin, 2023).
• Living Better: How I learned to survive depression (John Murray, 2020)
• Eight volumes of Diaries about is time working in government

Stories mentioned in the podcast:

• ‘I was probably the only atheist in the room’: Alastair Campbell on Bible studies with Justin Welby: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/11-september/news/uk/i-was-probably-the-only-atheist-in-the-room-alastair-campbell-on-bible-studies-with-justin-welby
• Churches marking 25 years since 9/11: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/11-september/news/world/churches-marking-25-years-since-911
• Education: Is AI a threat or an opportunity for young people?https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/11-september/features/features/education-is-ai-a-threat-or-an-opportunity-for-young-people

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Picture credit: Alamy

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 Symposium series concludes this week with a talk by the Bishop of Edmonton, Dr Anderson Jeremiah, and a response by Dr Anna Rowlands, the St Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University.

The title of the talk is: ‘The Radical Act of Common Life: Finding “Us” in a World Drifting Apart.’

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.

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

Dr Jeremiah became Bishop of Edmonton in 2024. He is the first Dalit, and the first presbyter ordained in the Church of South India, to be appointed Bishop in the Church of England. He was the first lecturer in World Christianity in the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, and is a globally recognised Anglican Theologian with research interests in the lived facet of World Christianity, and its theological, political, and missional engagement in the wider society. He is the author of Community and Worldview among Paraiyars of South India (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Professor Rowlands is also the Vincentian Chair in Social Justice at St John University, New York. She is an ecumenical lay canon of Durham Cathedral and the Chair of the UK Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice, and a Member of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development. She is the author of Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic social teaching in dark times (Bloomsbury, 2021). Her current book project is on three women social philosophers read as political theologians: Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Gillian Rose.

Picture credit: Diocese of London

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 Symposium continues this week with a talk by the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, and a response by the church historian the Revd Dr Jeremy Morris.

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.

Read more about the Symposium here

Dr Francis-Dehquani’s books include:

(SPCK, 2025). Read our review here
Cries for a Lost Homeland: Reflections on Jesus’ sayings from the cross (Canterbury Press, 2021). Read an extract here
Dr Morris’s books include:

A People’s Church: A history of the Church of England (Profile Books, 2023). Read our review here
To Build Christ’s Kingdom: An F. D. Maurice Reader (Canterbury Press, 2007)

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Picture credit: Diocese of Chelmsford

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