EKKLESIA will be in attendance by invitation at two of the four BBC Reith lectures this year. Our Wales associate, the Rev John Gillibrand, was present for the presentation by former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams last week, and director Simon Barrow will be hearing the lecture by Darren McGarvey this week.
The series will be broadcast in December 2022, and will be chaired by presenter, journalist and author, Anita Anand.
The featured speakers Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lord Rowan Williams, Darren McGarvey and Dr Fiona Hill. They will deliver lectures inspired by Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous ‘Four Freedoms’ speech. In this speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), the US President proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy
Each contributor to this Reith series will explore one of Roosevelt’s themes: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The different lectures are being recorded in London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Washington DC respectively, in late October and November. After they are broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service they will be available online via BBC Sounds.
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual talks given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Lord Reith, the corporation’s first director-general.
Ekklesia will follow up on the series with some articles from different contributors on the meaning of freedom.