*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

Podcast: Mark Oakley on John Donne's lessons for today's Church

by
30 June 2023

0:00 / 0:00

This week’s podcasts brings another highlight of the most recent Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, which took place in Winchester in late February: Mark Oakley’s talk, “What if this were the world’s last night?” John Donne’s lessons for today’s Church.

“[Donne’s] commitment to nearness means resisting soundbite theology, any quick clarity or easy answer,” Dr Oakley says.

“It means resisting turning honest complexity into dishonest simplicity; it means bearing with each other, seeking to read the lines of yourself and others, so that and this, I feel, might be Donne’s great contribution to us as a Church  we are not charged to be relevant, but resonant. Our faith is not an opinion column, it is not a hobby, it is not the latest fad: it is seeking to address the perenial depth of what we experience as being human. Resonance happens in a deeper place than relevance.”

The Revd Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and Canon Theologian of Wakefield Cathedral. His books inclued The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), which won the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize. He recently received the Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Awards 2023.

Read his review of two recent books about Donne here, and listen to a Radio 4 programme on John Donne to which he contributed here, Belief in Poetry, here.

 faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPadSoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast platforms. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)