In a year, marking the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, the theme – unsurprisingly – was ‘A Truth Universally Acknowledged.’
Truth was the theme taken up and discussed by Edward Stourton, the journalist and BBC presenter. He gave the Sir Tony Baldry lecture in honour of the festival’s founder and president. He had re-written his address several times in response to recent events – ‘we have quietly accepted the idea that multiple truths exist’, he noted.
Believed to the only literary event in the UK with a focus primarily on faith, speakers over the weekend included Diarmaid McCulloch, Rachel Mann, Malcolm Guite, Chine Macdonald, Cathy Rentzenbrink and Francis Spufford.
In a stimulating talk, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell described the radical challenge of the Lord’s Prayer. Amongst many lively sessions, attendees enjoyed sessions on the faith of Jane Austen, whether Bishops would baptise an alien and church buildings through the eyes of a stone-mason. The current state of belief was also examined in a session with authors Rupert Shortt and Nick Spencer. They suggested that the current decline in the institutional church was being matched with a new openness to spiritual matters. The ‘lunar landscape’ of unbelief did not satisfy the longing for meaning – ‘hashtag be nice’ was pretty thin gruel, they suggested.
The weekend was enriched by the speakers and conversations as well as three opportunities to experience choral Evensong in the Cathedral, and a sumptuous concert on the closing evening by Papagena, a five-piece a capella choir who selected a repertoire that focused on women’s experiences, sacred and secular.
