Immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine the BBC recognised that something extra meaningful would be required from its daily religious slot, Thought for the Day.
No offence to its regular Thinkers, the meek being blessed and so forth, but this was a moment for TFTD’s random Buddhists, novelist-preachers and the man from the Iona community to step aside while one of the world’s star prelates showed how a secular audience can still benefit from organised religion.
Radio 4’s Today programme – cursed to feature this slot for eternity – duly introduced the archbishop of Canterbury’s thought as a “special” one. “To wake up to the news of war is terrible” was the celebrity’s rousing start – well, rousing if you know that a non-special TFTD generally goes for an introductory anecdote, where no interesting religious festival is available, about reading a gas meter or watching telly. The Adam Kay drama, for instance, got canon Angela Tilby, TFTD’s answer to Tammy Faye, wondering if hospitals shouldn’t be less hierarchical and thus “more in tune with the Christian roots of the NHS”. Another regular began: “Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine I came down with Covid, which is this dreadful year in a nutshell.”
But Justin Welby, in training for this all his life, knew a bard moment (“Shakespeare refers to war as chaos”) should preface the diagnostic this-is-how-we-are-feeling section of his address: “We are thinking, where is it going to go next?” A quote from Jesus – “in the world you will have trouble, but do not be afraid” – and we were soon cantering towards the classic TFTD conclusion: that there are no answers to all the awfully big questions beyond the speaker’s declaration of faith. Welby’s audience could forget Ukraine and dwell, by way of respite, on him. “For me and for many of faith, the great certainty in the world, the only certainty, is that we know that God does not change.”
At times like this, we ask: how can such stuff still be broadcast to the educated audience of a news programme? There are no easy answers. Nor, despite decades of protests against TFTD’s platitudes, is any end in sight. But having listened to most of the offerings since the Russian invasion I do know we should give thanks: the archbishop’s wartime contribution could so easily have been worse. His message was not, in contrast to some fellow contributors’, spectacularly silly, deranged or offensive. That might not sound much of an achievement, but one junior thinker, a mask-hating Telegraph journalist anointed by the BBC, would later volunteer this insight: “Ukraine has touched the west in the way that Syria or Yemen did not – and one of the reasons is that, being a European country, it looks so familiar.” Well, as a fellow TFTD sage tells us, “we are all sinners”.
Are the contributions, you sometimes wonder, even edited? Not just for taste and decency, but for weirdness, for repetition. Within the last month, we’ve heard twice about doubting Thomas, ditto the story about Abraham hosting the angels, along with ritual reminders, for any listeners unaware, that rape is bad, time precious and war, though dreadful, not new. “Although dating back several thousand years, the context in which Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita was first spoken is strikingly similar.”
Along with various Ukraine-refreshed bromides, the audience has been invited to consider deep suffering as a learning opportunity and to enjoy music that teaches everybody, not excluding dispossessed refugees, to look on the bright side. Oddly enough, the occasional confession of utter defeat can come across better. “Buddhism has no magical answer to events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
We can only hope, anyway, that no survivors of Bucha heard the offering by Brian Draper (“associate lecturer at London’s Institute of Contemporary Christianity”), delivered when there was still some of Bucha left to be shelled: “A friend told me recently how she’s listening to Rachmaninov’s Vespers to identify with the spiritual sorrow of Russia.” Music, Draper said, “carries us beyond words and hopefully beyond division too”. And maybe there really is some tune out there, since words have yet to enlighten Russia’s patriarch Kirill that could carry his and other faith communities beyond their divisions. Isn’t it time someone told Kirill, as bishop Nick Baines recently told us, that “hope has a melody and life has a rhythm that makes us dance”?
But post-invasion TFTDs have yet, perhaps understandably, to mention the elephant in the pulpit. Even with their vast experience separating palatable religion from the horrible bits, any Thinkers who publicly speculate on how another religious leader can be so obscenely wrong risk reminding listeners that their own authority derives, give or take some job titles, from the same source. Kirill’s even done his Thoughts for Each Day of the Year.
Was it a good idea for Welby to invite this monster round in 2016? It would look more like a well-meaning mistake if Kirill hadn’t previously denounced feminism as a threat to the motherland, adding that it was “no accident” that most feminist leaders were unmarried. Still, what’s the subjugation of half of humanity when impressive faith alliances are at stake? Meeting at Lambeth Palace, it was recorded, the Anglican and the future genocide sympathiser “agreed that the first loyalty of the Christian church is to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they affirmed that reconciliation was the key ministry of the Church in situations of conflict”.
In a similar spirit, with the Rev Lucy Winkett teaching listeners that “reconciliation is the core of Christian living”, it might be harsh to hold an occasional tolerance for rabid misogyny against archbishop Justin. That said, until faith leaders can demonstrate the art of reconciling themselves, there’s a good case, if it can’t be axed, for the BBC’s inverting the cast and audience of TFTD. Wait until the clerics hear about that time an archbishop thought he was hosting a harmless old patriarch.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
