It takes two
Kate Chisholm
It happened just before the eight o’clock pips on Radio Two on Good Morning Sunday. One of those rare moments when something clicks on air and you’re suddenly so connected to what’s being said that you feel you’re in a private conversation. It’s just you and the voice on the other side of the microphone — but in that same instant you’re also keenly aware that you’re actually in this conversation with lots of other listeners. You’re alone but at one.
We’d just heard the Songs of Prophecy Gospel Choir live from the studio — an amazing sound at seven in the morning, light beginning to break across the sky — and now we were being led to think about what belief might mean to us by the presenter Roger Royle. His guests included Yvonne Ridley, who has converted to Islam, and Julian Baggini, brought up as a Christian but now an agnostic philosopher. This was the beginning of Radio Two’s ‘Faith in the World’ week, which this year is focusing on why people believe — in God ‘or a higher spiritual power’ — and why they don’t. Not in a combative, my way is better than yours spirit, or even in that annoyingly feelgood kind of way, but as an inquiry into what makes us tick as human beings. How we get by when things turn bad.
Yvonne Ridley told us how she had been captured by the Taleban while reporting from Afghanistan and was asked by her captors whether she was willing to convert to their religion. She promised them that if they set her free she would read the Koran and learn about Islam. They believed her and let her go. On her return to the UK she knew that she must fulfil her promise to her captors, but at first only undertook to read the Koran so that she could begin to understand what motivated the people she was writing about in her dispatches from the Middle East. Now, though, her Muslim faith has become the driving force of her life. Julian Baggini, on the other hand, was a believing teenager but gradually lost his Christian faith as he began to question its basic tenets.
Royle let their stories unfold without interruption or deviation. He then gave us (as this was Sunday and he is, after all, an Anglican priest) a reminder of the story in St Mark’s gospel where the father of a boy with epilepsy who has asked for healing is in turn asked by Jesus whether he believes. When he replies that he does, his son is healed. Royle repeated, without additional comment, what the father declares in front of the crowd who had gathered round Jesus and his disciples, ‘I believe. Help my unbelief... I believe. Help my unbelief ... ’ In the background the faint chiming sound of Evelyn Glennie’s ‘A Little Prayer’ trickled on to the airwaves. It was eerie, it was spinetingling, it made you stop and think.
Why it worked, I can’t quite say, except that it was early on Sunday, there was no one about, and all I could hear were these voices on the radio, talking with great purpose and clarity. No prevarication, not a word wasted.
It was so inspiring that on Monday I was up at six in time for Sarah Kennedy. Each day this week, on the ‘Pause for Thought’ slot in her daily show, five people told us about the place where they worship and what it means to them. This was not a personal witness of faith, a thought for the day, but an explanation of what faith means in a practical sense to a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist and a member of the Bahai faith. I was a bit surprised not to hear from a Christian about their favourite church building, but then I suppose, like the common seal, they’re becoming an endangered species on these shores.
I also discovered why Radio Two has such a loyal and growing audience (I guarantee it’ll get more and more listeners over the next few months as the economic news worsens). I had to get up fearfully early (for me) and at first felt like a bleary-eyed slug. By 7.30, though, I was full of beans — and so remarkably cheerful. Sarah Kennedy exudes warmth and goodwill without being determinedly cheery (which is so hateful first thing). She seems to understand what kind of music is needed at this time of day (James Taylor, Girls Aloud, Karen Carpenter), so that she gently awakes rather than blasts you out of dormancy, and through all the inconsequential chat about her weekend with the cats and picking up windfalls she also gave us snippets of all the news we needed to know before venturing forth into the world. It’s no more John, Jim, Evan and Sarah for me. I’m converting to Radio Two. ❑
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