Programme 1: By What Authority?

Priestland s Progress

Gerald Priestland begins his journey. He isn’t a theologian. More accurately he has no academic qualifications in theology. Yet he is intensely interested in religion, in theology, in what people believe. In this first programme he talks to people about their beliefs. He asks what religion is all about, and wonders whether theology is just a game for university dons, or something we can all do. And where do people find the authority for what they say, what they believe?

Questions:

1. You could begin by thinking about your journey. How did you get to where you are now? Who or what has helped you on your way?
2. What does religion mean to you? Does it help? Or is it a bind (the original meaning of the word is ‘something which binds’)?
3. How much do we rely on people telling us precisely what we should believe?
4. Is theology any of your business?
5. In what sense is the Bible true?

“Theology is reflection, critical and bold and hopeful and imaginative and also compassionate. Now that sort of theology is something which isn’t just a specialist business.”

Rowan Williams