The Church Times Podcast

“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

Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Picture credit: Alamy

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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

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