麻豆约拍

In a series of personal essays Richard Holloway considers the tensions between faith and doubt over the last 3000 years. Author and former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway focuses on the Judeo-Christian tradition as he takes the listener from the birth of religious thinking, through the Old and New Testaments, to the developments in subsequent centuries and their influence on thinkers and writers, up to the present day.

In today's programme, Richard Holloway looks at how four Victorian believers struggled with doubt - a priest and three poets. Cardinal Newman wrote about 'certitude', although inside he had anything but. The non-conformist Robert Browning was one of the first students at the new University College London had 'flirted with atheism' but couldn't bring himself to take the plunge. Richard tells us how Arthur Hugh Clough was 'clinging onto his faith by his fingernails' and talks to his biographer, Sir Anthony Kenny. In his poem 'Dover Beach', Matthew Arnold presages the Victorian crisis of faith as he hears its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar - which Professor David Jasper sees as a statement of humanity caught in a limbo of 'inbetweenness, that darkling plain'.

Producer: Olivia Landsberg
A Ladbroke production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.