IN Sir Seretse Khama, part of the Great Lives series on BBC Sounds, I found an informative review of the life of Botswana’s first president, a Black African leader who married Ruth Williams, a white English woman. This significant union placed them both at the centre of a complex international scandal in the mid-20th century. The retired Bishop Trevor Mwamba, along with other commentators, portrays the couple as two Anglicans in an interracial marriage who defied the odds.
Another individual who has faced significant challenges is the British presenter and campaigner for those with facial disfigurements, Katie Piper (Features, 5 November 2021). Check out Katie Piper: From surviving an acid attack to finding faith and love, an episode of Begin Again with Davina McCall (Flight Studio). Listeners should be aware that the episode contains strong language, and touches on traumatic and disturbing material. Ms Piper’s journey is both harrowing and inspiring. She is an extraordinary woman who has rebounded from the brink of despair, and faith has played a crucial part in her recovery from a horrific incident more than 20 years ago, which has involved numerous surgeries and a long path to healing.
Shifting gears, I wonder whether you sometimes reflect on the rise of Christian nationalism, especially the American variant. Long before the podcast shock jocks and sensationalist media emerged, preachers were utilising shortwave radio to lay the groundwork for much of what we can now find digitally. I began listening to episode 2, From Pulpit to Politics, of The Divided Dial, by On the Media. While you can start with episode 1 for contextual understanding, by episode 2, the influence of a fundamentalist Christian media company on politics in the United States is impossible to avoid.
The podcast deftly illustrates the alarming trajectory of how religious ideologies can manipulate and influence political decisions.
We began by considering the words of a bishop, and we will conclude with the Bishop of Washington, the Rt Revd Mariann Budde. She was the voice imploring the President Trump at his inauguration to show mercy (News, 24 January). Trump is a symptom rather than the cause of America’s lean to the right, and, in some cases, the far Right, leading to a more cautious, and unstable world. Bishop Budde appears as a guest on the podcast We Can Do Hard Things, in the episode The Woman Who Spoke Truth to Trump: Bishop Budde.
This conversation reveals an incredible bishop who listened to other Christian leaders fawning over Trump on Inauguration Day, and made a courageous decision to represent those without a seat at the table. This was not her first rodeo: she has a history of working in communities to foster cultures of Christian compassion and justice-oriented action.
Bishop Budde speaks powerfully and effectively about how we can hold our grief and despair without allowing it to become corrosive to ourselves or others. She has faced accusations of possessing the “sin of empathy”, a sinister turn in some emboldened forms of Christian nationalism. Ultimately, caring for those outside one’s nation and immediate family is perceived as contrary to God’s will. May she and others continue to speak for God’s love.
