Business as usual

A bird's eye view of our church, St Peter's at Sawrey #lakedistrict #cumbria #northwest #englishchurches pic.twitter.com/CYjYtzvEGK

— Tim Brownlow (@timjb69) November 24, 2018

"Nothing is the same", Andrew Marr said this morning. I don't think his colleagues at Radio 4's Sunday programme have got the message though. They were doubling-down on their ongoing mission to remain the most liberal programme on the BBC. 

This morning's programme began with discussion of the Modi government's "very controversial" new citizen law in Assam. "What is means for Muslims is the focus of a great deal of the criticism", said Ed Stourton. 

Then it was onto an exhibition of art work by prisoners at Chester Cathedral and a long segment on homelessness featuring the Bishop of Manchester David Walker. (He's on the programme so often he should be called 'the Bishop of the Sunday Programme'). 

The main discussion of the day involved a couple of liberals - Sunny Hundal of the New Statesman and Ben Ryan of Theos - agreeing with each other that the election has fracture faith communities and blaming politicians, the government and India's BJP. This discussion ended in a very Sunday way:

Ben Ryan: I think if there's one sign of hope it's that, compared to most of Europe, one area in the UK has done quite well is that it hasn't had a very close association between the populist right and Christianity. And there's various reasons for that, but one is that the churches have been so clear about their opposition to those sorts of policies. So there is a hope for British leaders to stand up and do something."

Ed Stourton: "On that more positive note, we must leave it. Thank you both very much for coming in this morning".

Oh, so you're agreeing with that, are you Ed?

Then it was only a new Netflix series called  The Two Popes and an interview with its left-wing director, Fernando Meirelles. Fernando originally intended it to be "a story of the Good Pope and the Bad Pope", but the Bad Pope (Pope Benedict) has grown on him. "I'm still more on Francis's side, but I understand his point", he said. The BBC's Emily Buchanan used the programme's usual kind of labelling, saying:

Many people talk about a lot of very right-wing Catholics seeing the presence of Pope Benedict as a rallying point for an opposition.

And finally, it was onto an interview with a nice lady from Tree Sisters who are running a Christmas campaign called 'Seven ways to be an earth-restorer' this year. Ed talked of the "high environmental price tag" of Christmas. 

You see what I mean?