Holy Smoke

The new Holy Smoke episode is a significant departure from our usual formula. It’s a discussion about the profound and neglected meaning of Christian art. Professor Ben Quash of King’s College London is interviewed not by me but by Carmel Thompson – my sister, who has appeared twice on Holy Smoke to talk about her battle with ovarian cancer but is determined not to be defined by her illness. This is a truly engrossing episode inspired by Carmel’s conviction that art depicting Christian subjects – and that includes most of the great art produced in the West up to and including the Renaissance – is too often examined from a purely aesthetic point of view. Obviously you’ll get far more out of this discussion if you can see what Carmel and Ben are talking about with such infectious enthusiasm, so here are the artworks chosen by Ben.

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell made the headlines even before he was enthroned last week, when he ‘revealed’ that Jesus was black. This came as news to everyone except the far left, race-baiting fanatics of Black Lives Matter. This week, I talk to Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, about the implications of this disastrous appointment, which means that for the first time in the history of the Established Church the sees of Canterbury York and the London are all occupied by intellectually challenged bureaucrats with an adolescence enthusiasm for wokeness. Subscribe to the Spectator's first podcast newsletter here and get each week's podcast highlights in your inbox every Tuesday.

Damian speaks to Edward Pentin, a veteran Rome correspondent whose upcoming book, The Next Pope, runs the rule over the runners and riders for Francis's successor. Click here to try 12 weeks of the Spectator for £12 and get a free £20 Amazon gift voucher.

With Professor Richard Landes, an expert on millennial or apocalyptic movements. Presented by Damian Thompson. Click here to try 12 weeks of the Spectator for £12 and get a free £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Today’s episode of Holy Smoke exposes the extent to which ordinary Christians have been betrayed by their own bishops. This is a process that began decades ago – but it is only this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, that we’ve seen just how corrupted church leaders have become by secularisation. The need to close churches for public worship during the lockdown meant that, for the first time in many decades, Anglican and Catholic bishops were able to exercise a small but significant degree of secular power – something they desperately crave. In doing so, they displayed a mixture of ruthlessness, vanity, hypocrisy and stupidity that will accelerate the decline of their own institutions. This episode will tell you things that bishops – in Rome and America as well as Britain – are anxious to conceal from their flocks. Please tune in!

When the shadow of the coronavirus is finally lifted, the British public will have a long list of people to thank: doctors, nurses, cleaners, shop assistants, charities and – maybe – Boris Johnson. But there won’t be a round of applause for the parish clergy, that’s for sure, and it's not really their fault: the bishops, especially the Catholic ones, have mishandled the Covid crisis spectacularly. And in the United States? To be sure, there are bishops and pastors who, like the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, form a Mafia of the Mediocre. But there is dynamism, too, and it’s interesting to note the extent to which successful Catholic and Protestant parishes share a common culture.  My guest this week is Keith Stanfield, the brilliant young violinist whose Opus 76 String Quartet played Beethoven for us so beautifully a few weeks ago. In addition to having played football for Western Samoa in World Cup qualifying matches, Keith has worked in the US financial sector. He’s a practising Catholic and a kee

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the strange and unstable world created by digital technology: one in which distinguishing between truth and falsehood is becoming almost impossible. My guest is the American journalist and businessman Robert Wargas. Robert is adamant that, despite the largely uncensored babble of social media, the boundaries of what it’s permissible to say in public are shrinking all the time. And this, he says, contains the seeds of a new totalitarianism. Presented by Damian Thompson.

Last week I was sent a copy of a devastating 7,000-word letter accusing the Catholic bishops of England and Wales of grossly mishandling the coronavirus crisis by lobbying the government for a complete shutdown of their own churches, even for private prayer. As you'll hear in this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, McDonald really stuck the knife into the Church’s officials, producing document after document calling into question their integrity. So have the churches been betrayed by their bishops? Presented by Damian Thompson.

In this week’s episode of Holy Smoke, I get to interview my personal heroine – my younger sister, Carmel Thompson. She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in November 2018. She’s now undergoing a second round of chemotherapy after coming out of remission. And she’s enjoying life. In our conversation she explains how the Coronavirus pandemic presents us with an opportunity to treasure the simple things in life – a lesson she learned the (very) hard way. She also talks about the two women saints who have given her strength – the ‘two Theresas’, St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Teresa of Avila. The drawing above is by the phenomenal Brazilian artist Ritchelly Oliveira (check out his Instagram account). It captures her indomitable spirit to perfection – though, in fact, it was drawn from a photograph of Carmel waiting impatiently for her brother to come out of a vape shop. I also talk to her next-door neighbour, Shelley Turley, who has acted as a sort of guardian angel during this troubling and surreal tim

Harry Mount, the editor of The Oldie, is appalled that thanks to the coronavirus regulations, he can't seek spiritual comfort in any of Britain's glorious churches. And he's not a religious believer.  In this week's Holy Smoke podcast, Harry tells me why the ban on even entering a church is so pointless: he describes it as a giant exercise in 'our old friend, virtue-signalling' by the Anglican and Catholic hierarchies. I couldn't agree more. It was the bishops, not the Government, who came up with the idea of a total lockdown. One minute they're opening their cathedrals to helter-skelters and crazy golf; the next they're grossly exaggerating the health risks of solitary and well-regulated visits to churches. (No one disputes that a temporary ban on public liturgies is necessary.) But this episode is about much more than the current outbreak of control-freakery from their Lordships. Harry Mount is an agnostic; why does he feel the need to visit churches? His answer to this question is fascinating and uplif

This week's Holy Smoke podcast is a celebration of what must surely be the most inspiring piece of music ever written by a sick man recovering from illness – the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 132, which he entitled 'A Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity by a Convalescent'.  The relevance of this sublime music hardly needs spelling out. But what makes this episode particularly special is that, when they learned of the plans for the podcast, a brilliant young string quartet based in Kansas City, which calls itself The Opus 76 String Quartet, offered to record it for us. And that's what they did, without charging a fee, in the lovely acoustic of Visitation Parish Church just before it closed its doors because of the virus. They made a video of their luminous performance, which you can find on the Spectator's website, and there are two short extracts in the episode.  My guest is the leader of the quartet, Keith Stanfield, who must be the only classical chamber musician in history to have play

Do you sense that something is missing in the churches' response to the coronavirus? In this week's Holy Smoke episode, Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, argues that the bishop's attitude of 'wash your hands and be nice' reflects the churches' polite surrender to secularisation – but suggests that ordinary believers now have the opportunity to show the public what Christianity really looks like. The coronavirus, dreadful though it is, could mark a turning point – one that leads to a religious revival in which the old breed of bishop-bureaucrat gives way to more inspiring leadership. Presented by Damian Thompson.

With Ed Condon, Washington bureau chief of the Catholic News Agency. Presented by Damian Thompson.

In this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, Damian talks to Jon Anderson, an expert on religious and political sects, about the collapse of Christian Science – whose followers included Joyce Grenfell and Doris Day – and the scary lessons it holds for today’s mainstream religions. Presented by Damian Thompson.

The dust has still not settled after Pope Francis unexpectedly – and very pointedly – ignored pleas from liberal Catholics to ordain married men as priests. They had a fully worked-out plan in place, but the Pope had pressed the 'delete' button. So what happened? With Vatican expert Dr Ed Condon, Washington bureau chief of the Catholic News Agency and a canon lawyer. Presented by Damian Thompson.

With writer Norman Lebrecht, whose book Genius and Anxiety takes a look at the exceptional intellectual contribution of Jews from 1847 to 1947, to the worlds of medicine, music, philosophy, engineering and more. Presented by Damian Thompson.

Just before Christmas, Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former Chaplain to the Queen, converted to Catholicism. In this episode, he deplores the Church of England’s surrender to secularism under Archbishop Justin Welby, who won’t enjoy his former colleague’s assessment of his talents... Presented by Damian Thompson.

With Dr Tim Stanley, journalist and historian. Presented by Damian Thompson.

We're all sick of celebrities making a meal of their mental health problems – but that doesn't mean that we aren't facing a potential crisis. The unique strains of living in the technology-driven 21st century are taking their toll on people who, in an earlier era, would have been psychologically robust. Many of us are affected by anxiety, depression, addiction and eating disorders; all sorts of compulsive behaviour are flourishing as never before. And the mainstream churches have got nothing useful to say about it. Many bishops seem content to blame it on Brexit. Damian Thompson talks to Professor Stephen Bullivant, Britain's foremost expert on patterns of religious belief. Both talk frankly – 'bravely', as they say of celebrities – about their struggles with mental illness.

On today's Holy Smoke Damian Thompson meets a one-of-a-kind bishop: one whose most important dialogue is with armed warlords and their teenage mercenaries. South Sudan's Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala runs a hospital that is desperately short of doctors and medicine amid a humanitarian crisis in which over 200,000 people have died. On the podcast, he talks about his work, and the apparent corruption of various NGOs who have set up shop in this terribly troubled part of Africa.