Last week saw the majestic Canterbury Cathedral play host to a conversation between Rowan Williams and Frank Skinner. The time spent listening to the conversation is well rewarded – as anyone who is familiar both with the work of Rowan Williams and Frank Skinner’s comedy and radio shows will recognise, this is a meeting of two very thoughtful, interesting and intelligent minds.
The conversation ranged far and wide, from Skinner’s (somewhat critical) reflections on sermon preparation to the nature of faith and church in modern day secular Britain. Neither participant was happy with comfortable or cliché answers to the problems the church faces and I was pleased by the complexity and depth of the conversation.
I would venture to say that, on many levels, both Skinner and Williams have a very similar spirituality, both comfortable with doubt and faith as being as much a wound as something comfortable – yet both agreed on the need for faith to be intellectually credible and the duty of Christians to be able to intellectually defend and think through their faith at a critical level. I particularly liked Skinner’s reflections that true faith is willing to be vulnerable when faced with things that might pose a serious theological challenge.
