Things Unseen

Presenter Mark Dowd quizzes the team behind our upcoming Easter drama - writer Nick Warburton, producer Paul Arnold and Broadchurch actor Joe Sims, who plays the part of Charlie Hammond. Together they discuss the links between the Easter story and the drama, and Charlie’s ‘lightbulb moment’.

At this time of year, millions of Christians around the world turn their minds to the events that took place in the “little town of Bethlehem” over 2000 years ago. Yet few stop to consider what life is like for those born in Bethlehem today. In this Christmas edition, Mark Dowd meets two young people from Bethlehem who are united in their love of an ancient spiritual art: icon painting, or “writing”, as it’s known. Nicola and Noura have come to Britain to write two large icons for Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire. Together with their teacher Ian Knowles they explain what this prayerful art form means to them and offer a glimpse of life in modern-day Bethlehem – a West Bank town with a dwindling Christian population surrounded by the Israeli security barrier on three sides.

The writers of Channel 4’s Humans get together with Artificial Intelligence experts to plan the construction of our very own android, or ‘synth’. What rights should it have? Is it even a good idea in the first place? Can we baptise it? Or have sex with it? Our panel is made up of the Humans writers, Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley; Kate Devlin of Goldsmiths, University of London, researcher into robots and sexuality; and Beth Singler from the Faraday Institute for science and religion at Cambridge University, where she’s exploring the social and religious implications of advances in AI. Mark Dowd stands ready to test for replicants.

Regarded by many as one of the world’s most influential living theologians, Stanley Hauerwas has always been opinionated and outspoken, not least on his pacifist convictions. On a trip from his native US to London to give a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields church, he shares his views on the perplexing, certainly to UK listeners, state of US politics at the moment. ‘I don’t think Trump has ever had a serious encounter with Jesus’, he says.

If you put together everything that the Bible records Jesus saying as he was being crucified, you find there are seven sayings, or ‘last words’. As well as finding hope in what Jesus said, the Anglican priest Lucy Winkett is also inspired by the fact that Jesus said anything at all. As a trained musician, she draws parallels between Jesus’ cries from the cross and the blues tradition of singing out your troubles, and shares her experience of singing the liturgy in a cathedral against considerable opposition from within the church.

Having begun his career with positive songs that affirmed his Christian faith, the Welsh singer’s music has become more nuanced. The self-proclaimed ‘liberal backslider’ talks to Alison Hilliard about his journey from answers to questions through his favourite Bible readings, read by David Suchet. He explains how a trip to Thailand and some preaching on John the Baptist turned his world ‘from black and white to full colour’, and his feelings about criticism, and even a death threat, from some Christians.

Astrophysicist and theologian, Revd David Wilkinson looks at a number called Omega. Omega is the name physicists give to one of several constants embedded in the laws of the universe which seem to have been incredibly fine-tuned to allow stars, galaxies, and ultimately us to exist. Are these pointers to a Creator God, or is there another extraordinary explanation?

Munisha has been working for many years as a lecturer and communicator for Buddhism. So she was used to explaining the central teachings of the faith, including the ‘4 Noble Truths’, which deal with suffering, and our response to it. When the severe anxiety she suffered from took her to her GP, the therapy she was prescribed turned out to be directly based on the teachings of her own faith. Happily, the counselling, along with her own regular Buddhist practice, gave her the help she needed, and transformed her life.

With a background in maths and physics, the Hindu teacher Jay Lakhani is fascinated by the concept of nothing. He traces the 7th century roots of the idea as a placeholder in counting systems, and explores Hindu stories about the origins of the universe, when something came from nothing. Jay asks ‘What caused the Big Bang?’ and finds a surprising answer.

Martin Palmer has spent decades exploring and translating Chinese historical and philosophical texts. For Things Unseen he explains the Daoist concepts of Yin and Yang and our role in maintaining balance, in the world and in ourselves.

The factual rigour of the world of numbers and maths, and the more intuitive nature of faith may not seem like a comfortable combination. But numbers have played a significant role in religious traditions, and in the lives of those with a faith. The author and broadcaster Trevor Barnes has been looking into the subject for a new book, and here he introduces our ‘Faith By Numbers’ podcasts, with a brief tour of digital divinity.

The Rev Kate Bottley came to national attention by leading a flash mob dance routine at a wedding. Since then her musings on the week’s TV on Channel 4’s Gogglebox, alongside her dog Buster and equally taciturn husband Graham, have propelled her into a world very different from her original work as an RE teacher. Through the prism of her favourite Bible passages, Kate shares with Alison Hilliard how she came to church and to the priesthood, what drives her, and what she worries about.

The storyteller Sita Brand separates the fact from the fiction of Zen meditation, and shares her favourite story about the way not to go about it. She explains that Zen Buddhist meditation is about being aware of the present moment, through the practice of ‘mindfulness’. Contrary to popular belief, she says, it’s not about blanking your mind, but about being aware of your thoughts.

Shaunaka Rishi Das from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies reflects on the life lessons he learnt from the Yamuna, one of India’s sacred rivers. His memories include a close encounter with a snake, and how he came to accept his wife’s death after scattering her ashes in the Yamuna.

Following a chance remark from a Ukranian flatmate on the stereotypical characteristics of her neighbouring countries (sleazy Lithuanians, tidy Hungarians...), the comedy writer Paul Kerensa decided to investigate the global nature of our tendency to pigeon-hole nationalities. With stand-up comedians replacing jokes aimed at minorities with ones at the expense of celebrities and nearby towns, he compares tribal attitudes in parts of the Christian Bible, and thinks about victimless comedy.

Sisters Caroline Clare and Susan Elizabeth of the Community of Saint Clare in Freeland, Oxfordshire, show us how they make communion wafers, from preparing the batter to using ‘the Church of England’s equivalent of a waffle iron’. They also explain how prayer goes into each batch of wafers.

Ian Knowles is an artist and founder-director of the Bethlehem icon centre. Most of his icons are created on wood, but his most famous icon was painted on the separation wall dividing Israel from the West Bank. ‘Our Lady Who Brings Down Walls’ was made to bring hope into a hopeless situation, he says, to bring something good into the midst of suffering and fear.

Faraz Yousafzai is the lead singer and guitarist of the folk-rock band, SilkRoad. For our A-Z, he gives free rein to his poetic side to draw out connections between physical vibrations (such as those of the heart and cells in the body) and the way human beings respond to certain musical chords.

At the beginning of Lent we asked our listeners to look forward to the events to come in the Christian calendar – Good Friday and Easter. We set them a challenge to write haiku in response, three-line Japanese-inspired poems following a strict 5-7-5 syllable format. We’ve now recorded some of them, adding music and sound-effects. The poet Stewart Henderson joined Alison Hilliard in the Things Unseen studio to share his own haiku, and respond to those which were sent in.

Chine McDonald (nee Mbubaegbu) of the Evangelical Alliance examines why unity is important for people of faith – and why it need not lead to uniformity.