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BBC Radio 4


Discussion of religious movements and the theories and individuals behind them.


In Our Time: Religion

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a story that circulated widely in the middle ages about a highly learned woman who lived in the ninth century, dressed as a man, travelled to Rome, and was elected Pope.

Her papacy came to a dramatic end when it was revealed that she was a woman, a discovery that is said to have occurred when she gave birth in the street. The story became a popular cautionary tale directed at women who attempted to transgress traditional roles, and it famously blurred the boundary between fact and fiction. The story lives on as the subject of recent novels, plays and films.

With:

Katherine Lewis, Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research
Associate at the University of York

Laura Kalas, Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University

And 

Anthony Bale, Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at the University of
Cambridge and Fellow of Girton College.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Alain Boureau (trans. Lydia G. Cochrane), The Myth of Pope Joan (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

Stephen Harris and Bryon L. Grisby (eds.), Misconceptions about the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2008), especially 'The Medieval Popess' by Vincent DiMarco

Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (Routledge, 1996)

Jacques Le Goff, Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages (Reaktion, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Pope Joan’

Marina Montesano, Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2024)

Joan Morris, Pope John VIII - An English Woman: Alias Pope Joan (Vrai, 1985)

Thomas F. X. Noble, ‘Why Pope Joan?’ (Catholic Historical Review, vol. 99, no.2, 2013)

Craig M. Rustici, The Afterlife of Pope Joan: Deploying the Popess Legend in Early Modern England (University of Michigan Press, 2006)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Pope Joan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hindu goddess Kali, often depicted as dark blue, fierce, defiant, revelling in her power, and holding in her four or more arms a curved sword and a severed head with a cup underneath to catch the blood. She may have her tongue out, to catch more blood spurting from her enemies, be wearing a garland of more severed heads and a skirt of severed hands and yet she is also a nurturing mother figure, known in West Bengal as ‘Maa Kali’ and she can be fiercely protective. Sometimes she is shown as young and conventionally beautiful and at other times as old, emaciated and hungry, so defying any narrow definition.

With

Bihani Sarkar
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Non-Western Thought at Lancaster University

Julius Lipner
Professor Emeritus of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of Cambridge

And 

Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

During this discussion, Julius Lipner reads a translation of a poem by Kamalakanta (c.1769–1821) "Is my black Mother Syama really black?" This translation is by Rachel Fell McDermott and can be found in her book Singing to the Goddess, Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Mandakranta Bose (ed.), The Goddess (Oxford University Press, 2018) 

John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (eds.), Devi: Goddesses of India (University of California Press, 1996)

Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.), Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol 1 (Brill, 2025)

David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (University of California Press, 1986), especially chapter 8

Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Encountering Kālī in the margins, at the center, in the west (University of California Press, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Kali

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore typology, a method of biblical interpretation that aims to meaningfully link people, places, and events in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, with the coming of Christ in the New Testament. Old Testament figures like Moses, Jonah, and King David were regarded by Christians as being ‘types’ or symbols of Jesus. 

This way of thinking became hugely popular in medieval Europe, Renaissance England and Victorian Britain, as Christians sought to make sense of their Jewish inheritance - sometimes rejecting that inheritance with antisemitic fervour. It was a way of seeing human history as part of a divine plan, with ancient events prefiguring more modern ones, and it influenced debates about the relationship between metaphor and reality in the bible, in literature, and in art. It also influenced attitudes towards reality, time and history. 

With

Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London

Harry Spillane, Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge and Research Fellow at Darwin College

And 

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Associate Professor in Patristics at Cambridge. 

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (first published 1966; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Margaret Christian, Spenserian Allegory and Elizabethan Biblical Exegesis: The Context for 'The Faerie Queene' (Manchester University Press, 2016)

Dagmar Eichberger and Shelley Perlove (eds.), Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe: Continuity and Expansion (Brepols, 2018)

Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)

Tibor Fabiny, ‘Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism’ (Academia, 2018)

Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (first published 1982; Mariner Books, 2002)

Leonhard Goppelt (trans. Donald H. Madvig), Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982)

Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England, 1650-1820 (first published in 1983; Princeton University Press, 2014)

Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (T & T Clark International, 1999)

Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisee (University of California Press, 1999)

Montague Rhodes James and Kenneth Harrison, A Guide to the Windows of King's College Chapel (first published in 1899; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Typology

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. It would have seemed extraordinary to Dante or Newton, from their different perspectives, that at the end of the 20th century there would be learned scholars who would find no place for religion in the great schemes of thought and belief. In the 20th century our notions of physical space have been revolutionised. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity; we’ve probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with space flight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics. But in the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual form of space has been introduced to us - cyberspace - where people can meet and communicate ideas; you sit at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world - the keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world? Or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics and even in Medieval theologyAccording to the science writer Margaret Wertheim, cyberspace - life on the surfing internet - gives us not only virtual reality, but a soul. Dr John Polkinghorne, the distinguished physicist and ordained priest in the C of E, is not happy with this news, but he does believe that religion is not destroyed by the new technology, and that latest theories in physics reinforce it. With The Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge and Canon Theologian of Liverpool; Margaret Wertheim, science writer and author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.

Space in Religion and Science

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether religion can still be seen as a way of interpreting and judging good and evil in modern western civilisation and examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil. As we entered the 20th century Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Was his hatred of Christianity a natural consequence of his belief in the unlimited possibility of mankind’s self creation? If we have enough basic self confidence in our own selves, do we need God?Leszek Kolakowski and Galen Strawson map the current terrain of morality as perceived through philosophy, politics and Darwin and Christ.With Leszek Kolakowski, author and Professor of Philosophy, Oxford University; Galen Strawson, author and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Jesus College, Oxford.

Good and Evil

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the roots and the consequences of religious fundamentalism. It still surprises many Western liberal intellectuals that religion survives at all. That fundamentalism flourishes is even more of a mystery. And if we shift the reach of fundamentalism to include the baser totalitarianisms, then the 20th century stands as sad and tragic exemplar of the power and the violence of what often begins as a belief in wholeness, oneness and fundamental values. The latter half of the 20th century particularly has seen the surprising and unexpected rise of religious fundamentalism - in all the major faiths. Violent acts have been done in the name of these forms of religion - suicide missions by Moslem extremists; attacks on abortion clinics by Protestant fundamentalists in the USA; killings at the Hebron mosque by a member of a Far Right Jewish religious group. Not surprisingly, the rise of religious fundamentalism is commonly seen as one of the most threatening forces now. But is it? With Karen Armstrong, writer on the history of religious ideas and author of A History of God: From Abraham to the Present; Tariq Ali, film-maker, writer and author of The Book of Saladin.

Fundamentalism

Melvyn Bragg examines the purpose and effects of prayer. Why do people pray? What did prayer ever do, the cry goes up, for those millions upon millions of non-combatants, civilians, children, innocents, whose lives have been ended by a savage variety of brutality? Do we pray for the benefit of God or for our own sake? Is it a good Christian weapon as Martin Luther defined it and as Mahatma Gandhi put it the most potent instrument of action; or is prayer simply the most essential form of self analysis? Or was Ovid right to see prayer as a way of changing the mind of God, when he wrote in The Art of Love, Even the Gods are moved by the voice of entreaty. People have prayed since the dawn of language - but why, and has it done us any good?With Professor Russell Stannard, physicist, religious writer and author of The God Experiment; Andrew Samuels, Jungian analyst and Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex.

Prayer

Melvyn Bragg examines the spread of religious doubt over the last three centuries. Nietzsche proclaimed that God was Dead in 1882, Hegel in fact beat him to it apprising his Berlin students of Gods demise as early as 1827. By the end of the 19th century echoes of the death of God can be heard everywhere: in the revolutionary politics of Lenin, in the poetry of Tennyson and the psychoanalysis of Freud. The march of Science seemed to challenge the authority of the Bible at every turn and by the twentieth century almost all the great writers, artists and intellectuals had abandoned the certainty of their belief in God.So who or what was responsible for this sudden spread of religious doubt? If God could truly be said to be dead then who fired the first shot? Have we educated ourselves out of Christ only to embrace the bleaker creed of Mamon? Is God a human construct or did God construct us? Is there an argument from design, or was the Big Bang morally pointless, without what we could call a mind at all? Did Darwin and natural selection rebut the idea of a divine purpose? With A N Wilson, novelist, biographer, journalist and author of Gods Funeral; Victoria Glendinning, author, journalist and biographer of Anthony Trollope and Jonathan Swift.

The Age of Doubt

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the areas of conflict and agreement between science and religion.What space should science leave to religion? What ground should religion give to science? Do they need to give ground to each other at all? The American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould tackles the old problem in his book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. In it he writes: “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that co-ordinate or explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important but utterly different realm of human purposes”. In other words ‘science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven’. But do the two realms really exclude each other? Can religion and science be so easily divided?With Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology, Harvard University; John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews and Stanton Lecturer in Divinity, Cambridge University; Hilary Rose, sociologist and Visiting Professor of Social Policy, Bradford University.

Science and Religion

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Humanism. On the 3rd January 106 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, lawyer, politician, Roman philosopher and the founding father of Humanism was born. His academy, the Studia Humanitas taught ‘the art of living well and blessedly through learning and instruction in the fine arts’, his version of ‘humanitas’ put man not God at the centre of the world.Centuries later, Cicero’s teachings had been metamorphosed into ‘Classical Humanism’, a faith in the soft arts of the Greek world. But how did Cicero’s ideas become Renaissance ideals? How did a small Greek curriculum later become a world philosophy? The human centred creed is credited with giving us human rights and democracy but has also been blamed for the most unspeakable horrors of the modern age. Have his ideas been distorted through the centuries for political ends? And why do some contemporary thinkers think the Humanist tradition is responsible for Elitism, Sexism and even Nazism? With Tony Davies, Professor and Head of the Department of English, University of Birmingham and author of Humanism; Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary College, University of London and Honorary Fellow of Kings College Cambridge; Simon Goldhill, Reader in Greek Literature and Culture at Kings College Cambridge.

Humanism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vikings’ myths. Thor’s huge hammer, the wailing Valkyrie, howling wolves and fierce elemental giants give a rowdy impression of the Norse myths. But at the centre of their cosmos stands a gnarled old Ash tree, from which all distances are measured and under which Valhalla lies. In the first poem of The Poetic Edda, where the stories of the Norse Gods are laid down in verse, the Seeress describes it in her prophesy: “I know that an ash-tree stands called Yggdrasil,a high tree soaked with shining loamfrom there come the dews which fall in the valley, ever green, it stands over the well of fate.” It is from this tree that the father of the Gods, Odin, will ultimately hang himself: an image of divine sacrifice so problematic for thirteenth century Christians that they left it out when they wrote the myths down.What was the theology that inspired the Vikings and what role did their myths and religion play in their daily lives?With Carolyne Larrington, Tutor in Medieval English at St John’s College, Oxford; Heather O’Donoghue, Vigfusson Rausing Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature in the Department of English at Oxford University; John Hines, Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University.

The Norse Gods

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