Jamie Franklin, Bijan Omrani and Nick Spencer chaired by Jane Shaw

Priest Father Jamie Franklin, barrister and researcher Bijan Omrani and researcher Nick Spencer discuss belief in Christianity and why they feel a return to Christian faith can save the West and help it to face upcoming challenges.

Franklin, priest in charge at Holy Trinity Church in Winchester and host of the podcast Irreverend: Faith and Current Affairs, argues in The Great Return that we must return to an individual and collective belief in Christianity if we are to avoid a bleak, nihilistic, totalitarian future. He draws on writers and thinkers including Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Galileo, Aquinas, Dawkins, C S Lewis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali to argue that the decline of Christianity will lead to the decline of humanity as we know it. He argues that we are losing the moral sense and ability to make cognitive sense of the world to act wisely.

Omrani is a barrister and a research fellow at the University of Exeter. His research and books examine questions of religious history and cultural identity. In God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, he argues that the decline in Christianity is the most momentous change in English history. He says Christianity is at the heart of the creation of the English nation and its codes and morality. And Omrani calls for the retention of Christianity as a way of dealing with eternal questions of the human condition and the malaises of modernity.

Spencer is a fellow of the Christian research organisation Theos and author of books including Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion and The Evolution of the West and co-author with Dr Hannah Waite of Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity. In Playing God, he takes a Christian perspective on science and medicine such as gene editing and AI. He argues that religion is not only about saving western civilisation but also about helping it to face future challenges.

Discussions are chaired by Professor Jane Shaw, professor of the history of religion at the University of Oxford and a former principal of Harris Manchester College.