Welcome back to The Great Humbling and a special episode in which we are joined by a longstanding friend of the podcast – Elizabeth Slade, the chief officer of the Unitarians, a religious organisation with a three-hundred-year history of dissent and radicalism.
If this episode sounds a little like it was recorded in a fish tank, then that’s because we set up shop in the front office of Unitarian HQ at Essex Hall, London, to squeeze in an in-person recording shortly before Friday’s launch event for Dark Mountain: The Last Issue.
Liz gives a shout out for the monthly Living Culture Coffee Mornings which she and Lloyd Davis host at Essex Hall – and the long history of radical gatherings on this spot, going back to the era of Joseph Priestley and Benjamin Franklin.
Ed has been working with the London Symphony Orchestra, helping them fall back in love with the future.
Dougald has been hosting gatherings around the centenaries of Ivan Illich and John Berger – including an online series called The Storytellers which starts this week.
We talk about how Dougald and Liz got to know each other through Issue 12, the SANCTUM special issue of Dark Mountain, when he edited her essay, “The God-Shaped Hole”.
At that point, Liz was working with Sanderson Jones as Chief Operating Officer of Sunday Assembly, a network of secular congregations. (Learn more at the Sunday Assembly Substack.)
“The truth that Bon Jovi can introduce us to is real… and it is limited!”
— Liz
Ed references Rosie Peters-McDonald’s article on the “Ceilidh renaissance”.
We talk about Liz and Ed’s collaboration with Brian Eno and other friends from the Hard Art collective on The Fête of Britain, which culminated in a kind of Sunday service.
Dougald recommends Ian Marcus Corbin’s new book, To Arrive Where We Started.
Ed talks about this article by V (formerly Eve Ensler), “We are seeing the rise of psychopatriarchy everywhere”.
Liz talks about the work the Unitarians have been doing with Iona Lawrence and colleagues from The Decelerator's Substack.
We end the episode discussing what (or who!) each of us would choose to burn on a bonfire at this liminal moment in the year – and this sparks a connection to Eleanor Robins Vigil for Memory (and against data centres) this Halloween.
Thanks for listening! We promise not to leave it quite so long before the next episode.
Meanwhile, you’re warmly invited to join Dougald for The Storytellers, a five-week online series around the work of John Berger and Ivan Illich, we gets underway later this week.
