Bishop Graham Tomlin on Re-enchanting... culture

Season 1 | Episode 1

In this inaugural episode, Belle Tindall and Justin Brierley chat with Bishop Graham Tomlin, director of the recently established Centre for Cultural Witness, about modern 'dis-enchantment' and whether there is still room for Christian faith in the contemporary West. They discuss the new podcast Re-Enchanting and the Centre's new website Seen & Unseen.

There’s more to life than the world we can see. Re-Enchanting is a podcast from Seen & Unseen engaging faith and spirituality with leading figures in science, history, politics, art and education. Can our culture be re-enchanted by the vision of Christianity?

[MrDoctorrLove]

Wonderful conversation, love the focus on bringing back the mystical (beyond logical) to life

[JohnnyHofmann]

Awesome conversation. Looking forward to the many to come!

[dearestsimone]

"Enchantment" is a good word because it signals to people (unconsciously) that there is a spiritual component present, something in the true dimension of spirit. Something beyond them. We are grown tired of explanations, understanding everything, or thinking that we do. The term 'enchantment' awakens the dimension of the spiritual without having to get into the hairs of what the word "spiritual' means, as it has its own history, provokes reaction to truth, etc. Something like this. Don't milk the term too much-- it will get wrung out. Not *too much* explanation....

[jnielson]

Half way through and I'm stopping - while this is in many ways lovely, I'm afraid if you want to re-habiltate what Christianity has to offer in terms of contextualising life and values there are some things you need to do: 1) be clear about your position on homosexuality - I and many others don't have any time for fantasy-enriched hatred or destruction of lives 2) don't refer to there being 2000 years worth of thought or anything - that could well be 2000 years worth of mistakes 3) you need to explain your stance on Jesus giving his life for out sins - while, again in many ways lovely and transformative as a basic sentiment, this is an enormously flawed narrative that doesn't work for anyone inclined to think carefully about stories - God supposedly instantiated the mechanics of sin whereby they need to be atoned for at all and presumably can simply forgive them rather than having his son (who is also him?) be tortured and killed-but-not-killed... what does that do? If it does something good (*what* exactly??) then what about the people who sinned before the crucifixion? If it's a metaphor/ parable - then say so. The demand that people believe in fantasy with plot holes is very off-putting 4) de-theize your library's content and embrace/ explore non-theistic or humanistic methods of enchantment... Alan Moore's views on magic and art might be a great place to start 5) please don't cast science or ontological materialism as in opposition to spirituality - it's ahistorical and comes across as naive. And please make sure when referring to materialism as an ontology that you don't conflate it with materialism as a preoccupation with wealth and property. An ontologially materialistic world can be as rich, spiritual and complex as a dualistic world - we can be brute, physical organisms and have a spiritual function/ need/ drive in our brains. I am trying to persuade you to do the *good* that Christians who espouse the actual positive and compassionate messages of Jesus... without alienating enormous numbers of people. Good luck.