Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Academic theologian who became Bishop of Durham; his views on the virgin birth, resurrection, and rich-poor divisions sparked outrage.
On the island
Eight records
A Nice Dilemma (from Trial by Jury)
I got keen on Gilbert and Sullivan when I was a boy. It has a great sort of nostalgic association with me because I knew I was going I was in the army, I was going to India, and Dollycart was on in London, and I got to most of them on my embarkation leave, and so it's got that sort of thing as well.
I'm terribly fond of Mozart, both his secular operas and his religious stuff. He somehow seems to me to get the feeling so splendidly and this has just the bounce that ought to be there in exalting in God.
I'm very fond of listening to Strauss waltzes and so on, and I thought as a choice we would have this um this accelerationen waltz, because it's not one of the famous ones, but it does have some of the the the splendid um Strauss uh flair in it.
Figlia! a tal nome io palpito (from Simon Bocanegra)
Tito Gobbi and Victoria de los Ángeles
I've always Verdi I'm very fond of, and I've always thought that Verdi had a special relationship with his daughter. I believe that is so, though I've not read up the stuff. And there are some marvellous pieces where father and daughter suddenly surge into terrific music.
On Top of the Mountains (Swiss Yodelling Song)
I took a job for a while in Switzerland, you know, and worked for the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Um and since then um my wife and I, indeed the whole family, have been in in love with Switzerland and we go for holidays and so on. And so I thought I would like to take to my desert island, you know, just some of this um Swiss music when they yodel and when you get concertinas and people just enjoy themselves
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98: II. Andante moderato
I'm very fond of Brahms because I think it's marvellous the the depths he goes to and the beautiful tunes he has and the way he builds them up and this is an example out of the slow movement of his fourth symphony.
My Shepherd is the Living Lord
Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford
One is that the conductor is Bernard Rose, who was a colleague of mine when I was and he were fellows of Queen's College, Oxford, and so there's great associations with Oxford. And then the whole Tompkins thing and the choir is in this great tradition of English choral church singing, which means such a lot to me
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields
I have become more and more enthralled by Haydn and his masses, and I always have the picture when I'm listening to them, that I was told in some book or other that Haydn to to compose always put on his best suit and said his prayers before he started, because composing was very like going to church, and and and there's something deep and exciting in Haydn's Masses
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Was that a great shock to the system when [the public controversy] happened?
It was a shock. … because the way I came to controversy was simply by bringing before people what, as it were, everybody in the theological colleges, theological faculties, and most of the trained ministry of most of the churches throughout the world knew. And so I thought I was just coming clean about where we were.
Presenter asks
2:27How did you escape from it all? How did you cope with it psychologically?
I think three ways really. One, by um relying on my friends who appeared to be far wider than I'd ever thought, but I have a a lovely family and a circle of friends. Um the second was that I had already begun to discover that the the point about prayer really is to, so to speak, withdraw into yourself and find some interior quietness. And the third thing was that I am a a walker and I used to just walk round and round or out into the country and Durham and so on and just let things be.
Presenter asks
7:04How do you envisage spending your time all alone on an island?
Well, of course, at my age, it might very well bring about that sort of thing which is in the spiritual um history of um people from Hinduism as well as people from Christianity, which as you get older, an opportunity to actually settle down and concentrate on all the things you have learnt and reflect and try and be present to yourself and, as I would believe, to God and to the world around you. Mind you, I feel that I wouldn't take kindly to um too much solitude. What I would obviously try to do would be to be very disciplined about it
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
I would like to be able to take a book which I fear I won as a school prize, which is The Complete Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes. ... I think I'd thoroughly enjoy it.
The luxury
Well, I wonder whether I'd be allowed it, 'cause it might sound to be practical, but that's binoculars. ... So I think if I could have binoculars so that I could watch closely, I would find all sorts of fascinating things to keep me occupied for days on end.
Presenter asks
7:50And would you contemplate death?
Well, of course, one's at the age I am one's doing that already, I mean, because so many of one's friends retire and a good many of them die, and obviously that would be much in one's mind. I increasingly feel that I suppose the problem on a desert island would be the business of dying on one's own. And I think I'm afraid of dying still. I'm not afraid of death, because I think on the one hand I've had a splendid life and there would be a sense of an ending, and on the other hand, I believe that somehow or other you fall into the hands of God and there you are.
Presenter asks
21:43Do you suspect [Mrs Thatcher] wished she'd never [put your name forward as Bishop of Durham], as things turned out?
I'm not entirely clear, because I gained the impression that she was very scrupulous, in fact, about uh letting the Church of England do what, in due form and after due consideration, it thought it should do. Um I gained the impression later, um, when some of us bishops were invited to meet her, that she was genuinely hurt and disappointed, that we seemed to misunderstand what she was after, and how … Christian her motive was, how deeply she was concerned about the freedom and the flourishing of the individual, and that therefore she felt that she was not getting the support and perhaps the positive criticism that she might have hoped.
Presenter asks
26:50Do you think that you were guilty, perhaps, of underestimating the stir that [your remarks about the virgin birth and resurrection] would cause?
Well, clearly I was. I think I was formed by my experience of the controversies in the nineteen sixties over Honest to God and John Robinson, when I thought that these things had been gone through in a much more open and less threatening way, and I hadn't realized that there was a sense in which public opinion and church concern and so on had almost regressed. So I was surprised at the violence of it, yes.
“I think I'm afraid of dying still. I'm not afraid of death, because I think on the one hand I've had a splendid life and there would be a sense of an ending, and on the other hand, I believe that somehow or other you fall into the hands of God and there you are.”
“questioning the literal virgin birth is not questioning the truth of incarnation, God being the man whom Jesus was, and similarly, raising doubts about depending on the empty tomb, because I mean the tomb may have been empty, but why? So questioning the empty tomb is not questioning something which I believe very fiercely and deeply, which is that God had raised up Jesus, that the man Jesus in his personality and his promise and his presence had gone through death and was alive the other side of it, speaking of a whole possibility for us and for the whole world.”
“many Christians seem to be unnecessarily on the defensive because things are changing so rapidly, so they get sort of jumpy about other people raising questions about the faith instead of seeing that the capacity to raise questions about the faith is itself an expression of faithfulness.”