An Epic Struggle
Richard Holloway explores the tensions between doubt and faith: twenty essays broadcast by the BBC on Radio 4 over four weeks in May and June 2012.

Richard Holloway was Bishop of Edinburgh for several years. In this series of talks he traces the development of religious notions and the eventual resolution of their conflict with developing scientific ideas, from the origins of religious thinking through changing philosophies towards present day ideas informed by science, and the parallel struggles between the doubting yet faithful man and the strictures of organised religion.

BBC © 2012 Permission to hold and disseminate these essays was sought from the BBC, but permission was denied in April 2013. Hence there are no links from this page directly to Richard Holloway's series of fascinating talks.

However, the copyright holders, who are Ladbroke Productions (Radio) Ltd, and the BBC, have made Richard Holloway's recordings available through AudioGO and iTunes. This AudioGO site (opening in a separate tab or window) gives access to the talks, whose content I summarise below.

I should also mention that a transcript of the series is currently available as an e-book from this Amazon webpage (which also opens in a separate tab or window).

Honest Doubt Prologue Richard Holloway sets the scene for his exploration of the tensions between doubt and faith over the last 3,000 years
Consciousness In the Beginning: Richard asks when the religious mind was born and looks at one of the earliest doubters
Iconoclasm Casting Out Idols: Richard looks at idolatry. He reflects on the story of the Golden Calf from Exodus
Revelation Revelation and Its Limits: Richard asks how it can be decided that it is really God at the other end of a revelation
Mysticism Mysteries Not Problems: Richard looks at the meaning of the word mystery and the work of three medieval mystics
Reformation Breaking Up: Richard explores the role of doubt as a means of challenging prevailing religious thought
Poet Priests The Agony and the Ecstasy: Richard focuses on three writers who wrote about their personal spiritual struggles
Science Vacating Heaven: How new scientific understanding influenced thinking on the relationship of mankind to God
Reaction Paying the Price: Richard Holloway discusses how religion dealt with those who paraded their doubts
Free Will Caught in the Middle: Richard discusses what is meant by free will and how three philosophers have approached the issue
Uncertainty Embracing Uncertainty: Richard discusses the work of the poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley
Doubt Believer's Doubt: Richard Holloway looks at how four Victorian believers struggled with doubt
Forensics A Post-Mortem: Richard focuses on 'the forensics of doubt'
God's Funeral Richard Holloway focuses on writer Thomas Hardy and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Godless morality Richard Holloway discusses the possibility of morality in a godless world
On the Edge In exploring the riddle of existence, Richard draws on the work of poet Emily Dickinson
Disloyalty Richard Holloway explores the theme of doubt and disloyalty with the help of three great 20th Century writers - James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene
Darkness Holloway continues into the 20th Century, focussing on the work of the Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, and the French Resistance writer Andre Schwartz-Bart
Presence, Absence On Presence and Absence: an enduring paradox in the story of doubt: that God can be experienced both as present and absent at the same time. Richard explores the idea with the help of three post-war poets - Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and RS Thomas
Love and kindness Richard concludes this series of twenty essays with the thought that love and kindness amongst us all are far more important in themselves than systems of thought—our religions—which may have persuaded us of those virtues in the first place
BBC Feedback A week after the programmes were broadcast, Richard Holloway's talks were the subject of several listener comments, both favourable and unfavourable. In this feedback item, Roger Bolton discusses those reactions with Richard and with the BBC commissioning editor Jane Ellison . . .
. . . and here is how the BBC website reports on that feedback programme:

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken". Those words were spoken by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell in 1650. He was addressing the general assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Over 350 years later a former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, has been making a similar plea on Radio 4.

He resigned as Bishop and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 2000 and since then his own theological position has become increasingly radical. He still attends church, denies he is an atheist, and prefers to be considered a Christian agnostic and an "after-religionist".

He has just completed a 20 episode series on the network called "Honest Doubt". On the whole it has been well received, with many listeners greatly enjoying his exploration, through history, of the space between the certainties of religious faith and atheism, a journey that made much use of music and poetry and a wide range of voices.

However there were some Feedback listeners who felt that once again Christianity was being attacked in a way other religions would not be. James Pennington asked "Why always Christianity in the firing line?" Why hadn't the Archbishop of Canterbury been offered such a series? Chris Moorsom suggested that "It would have been far more interesting and fair minded to put this into a dialogue format .... based on real debate".

On the other hand an atheist wrote to say she had found it "a captivating programme"

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