In Depth:  Rebecca Chapman

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Rebecca Chapman

What do the new Archbishop of Canterbury and Taylor Swift have in common? They have both been subject to some pretty unpleasant behaviour – online and offline – as women in the public eye.

The new Archbishop, Sarah Mullally, broke down at the General Synod earlier this year. She told the Synod, “I would love to encourage women, which I do all the time, but there continues to be institutional barriers, we continue to experience micro-aggressions,” before turning away from the microphone, fighting back tears. On the announcement of her appointment to the top Church of England job in October, those of us still on X/Twitter couldn’t fail to miss what one user called the “venomous reaction” from “hardcore Catholics” and “culture war atheists”.

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Rebecca Chapman

A new season starts soon, bringing with it a fresh school year. New classes, new schools, new friends. After a long hot summer, with protests across the country, increased restrictions on social media, and the narrative around migrants and the Middle East almost constantly across the front pages, can we expect a new narrative to emerge over the autumn?

My hunch is that we cannot. As more and more news becomes available across all kinds of online mediums, our newspaper (and wider media) industry comes under ever-increasing pressure to showcase what sells.

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Rebecca Chapman

Songs have the power to set a scene – whether rebellious, celebratory, or full of relief and hope. Songs like: School’s Out for Summer, We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday and Here Comes the Sun.

Songs sung together have even more power to unite us and evoke feelings. From terraces resounding with the sound of “swing low, sweet chariot” to the quiet beauty of a Gregorian chant or the moving repetition of a Taizé song, music made together has huge power.

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Rebecca Chapman

June has been Pride month – a global series of gatherings, begun as a march in the 1970s, that celebrate LGBTQ+ rights.

Interestingly, there have been articles this year suggesting that just perhaps we are starting to reach “the end of the rainbow” – some Reform-led councils have taken down Pride flags from their municipal properties. There are reports that Whitehall has banned civil servants from buying Pride lanyards.

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Rebecca Chapman

Trust between fathers and sons may sometimes be faltering, despite the best intentions of all involved, but recent headlines have shone an unpleasant spotlight on one particular royal father and son.

After Prince Harry lost a legal battle over taxpayer-funded security, his first instinct seems to have been to call the BBC to arrange an interview and publicly air his unhappiness. And also to fuel speculation over the health of his father by saying he “doesn’t know how long” the King has left. Loyalty to his father appeared to have left the building. Long-term royal correspondent and commentator Jennie Bond told LBC that “trust has been completely blown out of the window” – presumably on all sides. How that must hurt everyone concerned.

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Rebecca Chapman

Too much time on screens can provide something of a health-hazard. Physically, emotionally, even arguably spiritually.

A huge number of column inches over recent days have been devoted to the perils of the screen-based online world for young people especially, following the release of Netflix’s Adolescence. Meanwhile, YouGov data released in March revealed that in the last year, the median Briton has only read or listened to three books. A staggering 40% of the public had not read or listened to a single book in that time. This perhaps becomes less surprising if you consider that in England, 18% of adults aged 16 to 65 – so 6.6 million people – have “very poor literacy skills”. If you were looking to increase Biblical literacy, you wouldn’t start from here.

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Rebecca Chapman

This February the phenomenon that is the streaming show The Chosen has hit cinemas again, with the first two episodes of Series Four showing us more of Jesus and His disciples.

Director Dallas Jenkins hopes that watching will be a shared experience for many of us, encouraging people to ‘get together during a time that’s very divisive’. This new series is a step up in many ways – more focused, more confident storytelling, and more compelling with its mix of light and dark, sorrow and humour, faith and frustration.

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Rebecca Chapman

Which cinematic depiction of the devil most strikes home for you?

The silver screen has offered us myriad options, ranging from Wall Street banker Gabriel Byrne in The End of Days, to womanising Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick. Or, played by a woman, in The Passion of The Christ, or the classic Al Pacino performance in The Devil’s Advocate.