London vicar opens with needless falsehood. Fails much to improve thereafter
Who: Reverend Dr Sam Wells
What: Christian (Church of England)
Where: Vicar, St Martin-in-the-Fields, London
LISTEN TO PODCAST
AI transcript of the Radio 4 broadcast
The SecondThought Report (podcast script)
Welcome to the Second Thought for the day podcast. In this episode we dissect a Thought For The Day to expose all that is not factful and reasonable.
This SecondThought podcast is in response to Thought For The Day on BBC Radio 4 from 16 April 2025 which was by the Rev Dr Sam Wells.
We’ll try to provide as much context as possible in the review but if you’ve not listened to Well’s broadcast, here’s a brief summary so you’ve some idea what was going on.
Please skip ahead 60 seconds to get right to the report.
Sam focuses on two aspects of the easter story. The first is that all of humanity is mirrored in the cast: Peter is impulsive, Judas abandons his loyalties. Mary is faithful. And so on.
The second aspect, which is the thrust of the broadcast, is to see god, as Jesus at the centre of the story. That is, not a throne-sitting, glory hungry almighty but a vulnerable, tortured outcast. Apparently this signifies God not apart from, and above, human suffering but prepared to enter it, and embrace and empathise with human brokenness. Which, Wells concludes, is what Holy Week is all about.
You’ll quickly see what we make of it but you’re the only judge that matters. In case of use, at secondthoughtforthe day.com you’ll find the original broadcasts and transcripts, you also find the script to this podcast and relevant links and notes. As well as all the other podcasts we’ve done. That’s secondthoughfortheday.com. For now, here’s the SecondThought report on Sam Wells.
Sam’s broadcast opens with a falsehood. It doesn’t much improve after that. He starts by telling us …
WELLS: Every story invites us to take an imaginative leap
Hogwash.
Many stories do. Many, though, don’t. Who is this clown? Is he used to making groundless sweeping statements without fear of criticism?
He goes on to say …
The story of Holy Week invites us to take two. The first is to see in each character aspects of ourselves … The second imaginative leap is to see the man at the centre of things as God.
Oh dear, Sam. If only it were just the two.
The requirement for suspension of disbelief in the story of Holy Week is abundant from the outset. There are supernatural beings (or at least one that takes multiple forms). This being is eternal. This being cares sufficiently about life on earth, that it sent an envoy/embodiment to live as a human so that humanity might be saved from itself. That’s three required leaps of the imagination and we’re hardly even at the starting line.
We’re then told that …
WELLS: God is widely associated with thrones and power and glory. But there’s none of that in this story. This man rides a donkey of peace not a stallion of war. He’s beaten and mocked, not praised and lauded. He’s dragged through the streets and nailed to two pieces of wood. He’s executed among criminals and abandoned by his friends.
Really?
Sam then purports to speak for Christians and non-Christians on his knowledge of our minds…
WELLS: The curious thing is, even though this is the way he’s portrayed in this fundamental story, both those who uphold Christianity and those who keep their distance still default to a picture of God as high and mighty.
Speak for yourself, Wells.
I suggest that glory and thrones are very human concepts. For what does a god need a throne? Do gods have bottoms? Glory would surely only be necessary for a god in fear of defeat or irrelevance? That being the case, the word god is likely evidence of a category error.
Then, while setting up his conclusion, Wells then makes some interesting claims:
WELLS: We live in a culture saturated with information and obsessed with judgement. When we hear something bad about someone, we quickly unfriend them, cancel them and put distance between us and them.
What a dismal view of humanity and modern life Sam must have if he genuinely thinks these things. Even if he does, he has no business making groundless statements that present his beliefs as facts. He has no way to determine the saturation of information within our culture. Hyperbole it might be but it was also definitively a false claim.
Perhaps Samuel is reflecting with sadness that the church used to have something of a monopoly on information?
As for a vicar for the Church of England telling me that I’m obsessed with judgement. Get a grip. Or at least some self awareness. And of course, Sam, you have no evidence, or even rhetorical grounds, to claim that our culture is obsessed with judgement? This is more hyperbole; another ridiculous and groundless claim.
And what is it with Sam’s pronouncement of how we all behave when we hear something bad about someone? Sure, Sam may do this. It may also be the case that a significant number of people in our culture do the same. At best that is conjecture. To present it as fact and to apply it to all of us is groundless generalisation to make a false claim, seemingly, in order to deceive.
It’s then that we come to the first real problem with the broadcast.
Our vicar claims that …
WELLS: This is a story where God says, ‘I will never let you go. I am dying to be with you; come what may.
No Sam. You can belive and preach what you like, but don’t you think a little care is required when you’re not at your own dias, preaching to your own flock? You’re now addressing involuntary listeners who tuned in for Today, a news and current affairs programme that is among the best and most rigorous in the world. Your approach to reason and facts might benefit from an accommodation of this.
Let’s go along with the idea of the magical players in this story. This god and its Earthly envoy/son/incarnation is a supernatural being. It knows nothing of death. It is eternal. It can play-act at death but this has no meaning. Death has meaning only because of its finality. There is no sacrifice in death if there is convenient resurrection. There is no jeopardy if death is simply the loss of a life as if in a computer game.
What does dying to be with you mean in this context? Apparently Sam intends the meaning literally. That doesn’t just require leaps of the imagination it demands flips and twists.
Given this god is immortal, the notion of it ‘dying to be with you‘ is wholly without meaning.
Sam then claims …
WELLS: To embark on a project and invest everything in it and see it get into terrible trouble is to face a moment of truth. It’s a very human problem. This story says it’s a divine problem. It’s the divine problem. It’s what Holy Week is all about.
On this, I’m inclined to agree. It’s the really big ugly problem with divinity in this story. A divine being is immortal. Claiming meaning through death of a god in the teachings of that immortal god is to introduce an inescapable contradiction.
Leap is a wildly inadequate term for what is required from the imagination to take a word of this broadcast seriously. What a load of hyperbolics.
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