Religious Responses to Wilderness (Beyond Belief on BBC Radio 4)

I am one of three speakers on this BBC radio 4 discussion programme on the spiritual significance of wilderness.

Here’s the text from the bbc.co.uk: The Christian season of Lent is a time for recalling the forty days and nights spent by Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. In other faiths too the wilderness is a place of refuge, self- discovery, temptation and joy.

Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the idea and experience of the wilderness are the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, the Buddhist writer Vishvapani, and Laura Feldt, associate Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Odense in Denmark

I am also one of three guests on Last Sunday’s All Things Considered, a 30 minute discussion programme, talking about  conversion Listen

The text reads:

Islam sees hundreds of conversions in Britain every month. But the traffic is by no means all one way.  Wales is reckoned to have some 300 Christian believers who have come from a Muslim background. Other religions are also welcoming converts.

Roy Jenkins looks at religious conversion through the eyes of three people who know what it’s like from the inside – an Irish Roman Catholic who’s now a Hindu priest, a Jew who’s become a Buddhist, and a woman from a Welsh chapel community who’s been a Muslim for decades.