Having left behind the Anglican roots of her childhood, Jennifer Kavanagh discovered the Society of Friends – better known as Quakerism – as an adult. We spoke to her about how to be a practical…
Chine McDonald and Azariah France Wiliams discuss their understanding and experience of blackness and how that has shaped their identity, their place in society and the way they relate to God and Church.
Following on from our conversation with Matthew Fox, in this episode Anna Robinson leads us in a meditation that explores the spirituality of the remarkable 14th Century mystic Julian of Norwich. Anna gives us a…
Matthew Fox is an American priest and spiritual theologian and an activist for gender and eco-justice. His work on creation spirituality and mysticism has given him the reputation of being one of the most challenging religious-spiritual…
Never been married, never had children. The youngest of three, the bottom rank is where the novelty has worn off but the ‘fun’ never ends. I was ‘an excitable child’ so my namesake Roman Catholic…
Adele Jarrett-Kerr is a writer and podcaster on compassionate living. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, she now lives in Cornwall where her family is unschooling and working on a small regenerative farm. We talk to…
Merry Christmas, beloved listeners!In this episode we hear from Revd Canon Eve Pitts. Having missed Christmas in their church last year, due to repairs, the residents of Birchfield were looking forward carols and candles in…
Church on a Sunday morning meant singing, clapping, dancing, and watching the power men on stage fire bolts of spirit at people, knocking them to the floor. The service generally concluded with screaming, writhing exorcisms….
Singer-songwriter and author Lisa Gungor’s life was all coming together. She’d married her college sweetheart and was establishing herself as a successful musician. But cracks began to form when her husband told her he no…
The tranquillity of the park where I sat in my favourite coffee shop with my two-year-old, did not reflect how I was feeling. As I gathered our things together, after a failed attempt for a…
Therapists Justin and Joy get together for a conversation about spiritual abuse and how it can present in a church environment. Reflecting on their personal experiences, they explore the impact of spiritual abuse, describing how…
It took me a long time to get into a frame of mind to write this. Like many of you, there have been few people in my life who I could tell my faith story…
In this episode David speaks with priest and author Azariah France-Williams about his new book Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England. Azariah reflects on his experience of racism within the church, and…
If I can pinpoint a time when I started to have deep questions around faith, I think it would be when I worked in student ministry in Italy seventeen years or so ago. Coming from…
We’ve caused a turning point in the Earth’s natural history. Everybody Now is a podcast about what it means to be human on the threshold of a global climate emergency, in a time of systemic…
In this episode we speak with the director of Theos Think Tank and host of The Sacred podcast, Elizabeth Oldfield.
Elizabeth is passionate about exploring how we can build healthy friendships and societies in an age characterised by seemingly ever deepening differences, and what role faith can play in this.
My older sisters ended up getting us all kicked out of Sunday school. I’m not sure why, and I was definitely too young to remember it happening, but my parents tell me this was one…
In this episode we welcome Rob Bell back to the podcast. Rob’s written a new book – Everything is Spiritual – within which he explores how ideas about creation, love and connection have profoundly shaped…
I’ve been struggling with how to tell this story. My attempts to craft a chronological timeline of events feel like they leave too much out, too many words feel like they’re not the right words…
In this episode we discuss radical theology with author, philosopher and storyteller Peter Rollins. Peter explores the freedom that comes when we accept and embrace the lack within us and the struggle within life. He…
I was a child of the Charismatic Movement, in quite a literal way. Two years after my Anglican-Presbyterian mother got born again and Spirit filled, God told her to have another child. She stopped taking…
Toxic masculinity is a term that seems to be cropping up more and more in academic and media discussions, as we become more aware of the harmful effects – on men, women and society in…
My earliest memory of faith is lying in my bottom bunk each night, repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over, in the hope that, if I died in my sleep, God would let me into…
In this episode we speak with artist, poet and author Emily Garcés. It’s a heart-warming, heart-breaking, inspiring and challenging conversation, as Emily shares with us her journey through life and faith, with all of its…
In this episode we speak with therapist, theologian and author, Mark Karris. For anyone going through a faith deconstruction, prayer is often near the top of the list of things we struggle to make sense…
Dr. Hillary McBride is a clinical counselor in Vancouver. When she’s not doing clinical work she is researching, speaking, writing and podcasting (as a host on The Liturgists podcast), about the intersection of spirituality and mental…
“Getting to where we need to go often means finding a new language for where we’ve been.” Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints I woke up to the sounds of the rocky river, crawled…
In this episode, black liberation theologian Prof Anthony Reddie and the poet Ravelle-Sadé Fairman reflect on black experience. These searching thoughts begin with the recent murder of George Floyd at the hands of US police…
When I was a nurse at a hospital, we had a patient who eventually died of his cancer in our ward. Later his husband wrote a death notice in the papers saying: “The journey not…
In this episode Mark Oakley shares with us his lifelong relationship with poetry. He believes poetry is the language of the soul, and should therefore be the person of faith’s native language. For Mark poetry…
Tall. Chiseled features. Blue eyes. Flowing brown hair. Kenny Logins 80s-style facial hair (is that a trans-Atlantic reference or just USA? Well, Google it, I guess). Robes. Lamb draped over him like a towel over…
Theologian, poet and author Nicola Slee joins Jemimah to talk about when she first encountered feminist theology and its potential to challenge, inform and enrich our Christian faith and practice. Nicola Slee is Director of…
My story is one of becoming Unrecognisable. I was a home schooled child of the 80’s who went to church three times a week and was the star of Sunday School. I was a teenager of the…
In this episode vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church at Trafalgar Square, London and professor of Christian ethics at King’s College, Sam Wells shares his belief that to live well is to improvise well. He defines…
In thinking about contributing something of my story here, I’ll admit to flinching a little when ruminating on the final three words of the Nomad catchphrase, “Stumbling through the post-Christendom wilderness, looking for signs of hope.” Given the…
During a lockdown tidy up, my husband came across some DVDs of old photos. Looking through them was like entering a portal back to the early 2000s: babies, bootcut jeans and, for my husband, a…
We felt these unprecedented times deserved an unprecedented episode of nomad. So for the first time we recorded a remote episode, with Jemimah beaming in from Cardiff, David from Birmingham, and Tim and Nick from…
In this final meditation of the series, Anna reflects on the power of the greeting that Jesus gave his disciples when he met them in the upper room on Easter day. She considers what Pádraig…
In this meditation Anna Robinson reflects on our struggles with fear, anxiety and distress. She looks at how Jesus himself felt great fear, particularly at this time of Easter. Then, drawing on the wisdom of…
I feel like my story is very boring. I went to a kid’s club outreach by a local Baptist Church. I grew with them and decided to take my faith seriously when I was a…
In this contemplation, Anna Robinson considers the significance of acknowledging how we are feeling in these uncertain and unsettling times. She considers the importance of kindness and compassion to others and ourselves, recognising our shared…
Rather than an interview based episode, we felt these strange times required something a little more meditative. Each month for the last year Anna Robinson has been producing some wonderful meditations for our patrons. So…
I grew up in a Christian family. My childhood and early teens experience of the church was of a Pentecostal church until I was 12 and then a small brethren chapel ran by my uncle….
For just a few weeks we’ve all been living in a very different world. Sociologist and Baptist Minister Sally Mann reflects on how her community in London’s East End are adapting to the coronavirus pandemic,…
Mike McHargue is the host of the podcast Ask Science Mike, co-founded of the The Liturgists Podcast and author of Finding God in the Waves. He’s a public educator who weaves together insights from science…
I threw my Bible away recently. Actually, I threw away six, in three different languages. That’s what a good missionary I used to be. The only ones I kept were the beautiful gold-edged King James…
In another break from our usual interview format, we listen in on a conversation between Jemimah and Joy as they reflect on their experiences as women who grew up immersed in evangelical Christianity. Unpicking some…
I don’t see myself as particularly special. I have not been involved in any conspicuously important or miraculous events. My faith journey has been a gradual one, without significant drama. Yet in many ways I know I am…
In this episode we speak with anabaptist, anarchist and Christian animist, Noel Moules. Christian and animism are perhaps two words you haven’t heard together before, in fact you may well think that animism sounds somewhat…
The garbled prayer call was barely recognizable in the din of the midweek market crowd. Four years earlier, I would have stopped and marveled at the droning of the “Allahu Akbar,” but now it was…
Ann Morisy is a community theologian, community worker and author who has researched and written on everything from the spirituality of public transport, through to the spirituality of ageing. Her works draws on a wide…
As a child growing up in a very conservative evangelical church, we sang with gusto “It only takes a spark”. We were the sparks, and we were to spread God’s love by passing it on…
There’s a handful of guests that have appeared on Nomad a number of times, and Steve Chalke is one. Why? Because he keeps speaking and writing about really interesting things. He was one of the…
It’s Christmas! And so we thought we’d share a festive Devotional episode with you all. Pub landlady, touring musician and anglican priest Em Kolltveit talks about community building and hospitality when there’s no room at the…