Speechification

St Augustine never saw a bible in his lifetime. There’s a fact to get your teeth into. This really fascinating Radio 3 four-parter (four experts: one essay each - and one of them’s the Archbishop of Canterbury!) about Augustine is full of such mind-blowing information, especially the fourth part - presented by Dr James J O’Donnell, one of Augustine’s biographers - which I’m featuring here for the podcast (MP3). Part one, part two and part three are here too. Wonderful.

Steve Evans talks to religious people about business, including an American evangelist whose Dallas construction firm actually belongs to God (MP3). This is the Christmas Day edition of Business Daily on the World Service.

Ernie Rea makes grown-up, enquiring religious programmes for Radio 4. Speaking as a Godless atheist (worse: a Catholic Godless atheist), I’ve found his stuff to be very useful over the years in forming a view of religious belief. He’s presenting a five-part series putting top 1st Century gospel writer Luke into his historic context. The first part’s excellent: animated by a handful of the kind of articulate, questioning academics that make you glad to be alive in a post-enlightenment culture (although it is a bit cold out at the moment). I’ll try to grab all five of these programmes and put them here in this entry: they’ll add up to something really useful (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five).