Leaving Egypt Podcast

• EP#48 - Made to be With and For Each Other with Luke Bretherton

  ​​In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Luke Bretherton about the vocation of the church within the grounded, everyday realities of the local. Luke brings a rare breadth of learning to dilemmas so many are wrestling with, from the shaping of congregational life to how our common life became so atrophied and objectified in contemporary culture. Framing these big questions in ways that land in the ordinary, Luke explores memory, inheritance and place, and, unpacking the ancient democratic practices of the commons, he shows how these very commons became enclosed. Digging down into the impact of these trends, not only the loss of local power but also the crisis of institutional imagination in many churches, we explore what kinds of leadership and structures are needed to recover agency and to reimagine mission. This is a hope-filled engagement with how the Holy Spirit is calling God’s people on the ground into a story of civic and spiritual renewal. Along the way, we discover that “love fully realised” is not about providing services, nor about freedom of choice, but looks and tastes like communion.Luke Bretherton is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, where he also directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. Luke is also a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral and has duties as a Church of England priest. Until 2024 he was the Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology at Duke University in America. He has also been Visiting Professor at St Mellitus Theological College, London. Alongside his work as a theologian, Luke has long been involved in community organising and practical collaborations with churches, charities and mission agencies. He has written many books, most recently A Primer in Christian Ethics and Christ and the Common Life, and he hosts the podcast Listen! Organize! Act!LinksFor Luke Bretherton:https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/rev-canon-professor-luke-brethertonhttps://x.com/WestLondonManPodcast: Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic PoliticsBooks:A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live WellChristianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful WitnessChrist and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for DemocracyHospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral DiversityFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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• EP#47 - Finding a Place of Belonging with Angie Allgood

  In this episode Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet Angie Allgood, a social worker whose family roots in the Bonny Downs community shaped her vocation. Her family's generational faith taught her to see Jesus as a friend. Together with the East End tradition of extended family living, this fostered a passion for working with young people and others struggling with life. A moment of transformation came when she was led by the Spirit, through Isaiah 58, to give up statutory social work and focus on those in need within her own community. It was then that she learned from a homeless man about the “proper” way to help: rather than material provision or doing for, real healing comes through belonging and purpose. NewWay, a charity with a distinctive approach, then emerged. The “new way” involves a commitment to mutuality and accountability and a readiness to be vulnerable rather than transactional. Angie describes this as the purest and most authentic form of church. Angie isn’t a theologian, hasn’t been to seminary and isn’t ordained. She simply followed the Spirit.Angie Allgood is the fourth of six generations to live in the same few streets of East Ham, in Newham, East London, UK. Angie has been a social worker for over 35 years, has founded two local charities and pioneered many community activities. Her current role is as the Director of a small local Newham charity she co-founded: NEWway supports single adults affected by homelessness, providing purpose, belonging and safety, joining with churches of all traditions and the people of Newham to restore lives affected by homelessness.LinksFor Angie Allgood:https://newwayproject.org/https://www.linkedin.com/in/angie-allgood-535732164/?originalSubdomain=ukFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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• EP#46 Forming Christian Life in the Rust Belt with Reuben Slife

  In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Reuben Slife about the challenges of Christian life within the realities of late modernity. Growing up in America’s Deep South and beginning in the United Methodist Church tradition, Reuben planned to teach theatre. However, his path took him, via GK Chesterton and the plays of the late St John Paul II, into full communion with the Catholic Church and to life in Steubenville, Ohio, a small town in the American Rust Belt. Reuben finds himself living within an emerging community of Catholic families drawn to building a Christian life together. Reflecting on the dynamics within the town, he describes his experience, both as a Catholic and through his work as an editor of political theology. Reuben explores both the creativity and the tensions around forming Christian life in the midst of a modern Egypt, recognising its harsh categories of self, the state and the market. Drawing on ways of thinking gifted to us from outside the modern West, Reuben is devoted to bringing forward traditions that were vital before the birth of the modern.Reuben Slife is the editor of New Polity Press, in Steubenville, Ohio. New Polity publishes essays, books and podcasts and is a think tank for political theology, dedicated to cultivating the Catholic tradition and fostering a movement to resist the cultural and political trends of the liberal state. Reuben edited and oversaw the translation of Rocco Buttiglione’s Modernity’s Alternative, on Latin America’s “theology of peoples” [teología del pueblo], and currently is working on America in the Mystery of Christ and the Church by David L. Schindler. LinksFor Reuben Slife:https://newpolity.com/presshttps://newpolity.com/https://newpolity.com/podcastshttps://newpolity.com/magazineBooks mentioned in this episode:Modernity's Alternative: How History Is Formed in the Depths of the Peoples by Rocco Buttiglione (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, 2025)The Church Against the State: on Subsidiarity and Sovereignty by Andrew Willard Jones (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, 2025)America in the Mystery of Christ and the Church by David L. Schindler, edited and with an introduction by Reuben Slife (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, forthcoming)For Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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• EP#45 A Church Listening for the Spirit with Avril Baigent

  In this episode Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair meet again with Avril Baigent. In an earlier episode (#05) of Leaving Egypt, Al and Jenny discovered Avril’s involvement with the movement known as Synodality. This is a process initiated by the late Pope Francis across the Catholic Church, enabling Catholics at all levels of the Church to come together in processes of listening to one another and to the Holy Spirit. Centred on an ancient method called “Conversation in the Spirit”, Synodality is slowly enabling fresh spaces within the Church for discerning how the Spirit is calling us to join with God. Sharing real stories of deep transformation through her own experience of this global movement, Avril is clear that this process is no “add water and stir” quick fix for ailing parishes. It takes time. This process takes us deep into encounter with one another and has the potential to resolve difficult decisions, overcome power imbalances and resolve painful conflict. And not only within the Church, it also takes us into deep, listening relationships with the people in our neighbourhoods and local communities. It is in these engagements that discernment emerges as we hear the Spirit through the other.Avril Baigent is co-director of the School for Synodality where she promotes the ancient Catholic practice of 'walking together with the Holy Spirit’. In addition, as Director of Pastoral Development at the Diocese of Northampton, she is embedding synodality in the life of the diocese, promoting lay vocations and helping local Catholic communities to imagine their futures together. Avril has also recently completed her PhD youth ministry at Durham University, and helps out in her parish as a musician and children’s liturgy leader.We hope that you are enjoying Leaving Egypt. We would invite you to join the Leaving Egypt community on Substack by becoming a paid subscriber: https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribeLinksFor Avril Baigent:https://www.schoolforsynodality.org.uk/https://pastoralministryoffice.org/home-copy/staff/https://northamptondiocese.org/chaplaincy/https://www.linkedin.com/in/avrilbaigent/?originalSubdomain=ukFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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• EP#44 - A New Kind of Humanism with Susannah Black Roberts

  In this episode Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Susannah Black Roberts about the need for a new Christian humanism. Susannah is a journalist and an editor whose imagination is shaped by her life in New York City. With infectious curiosity she guides us to ask questions about what it means to be human and proposes we respond, in the growing shadow of AI, by making and doing rather than consuming. From Aristotle to Aquinas, from CS Lewis to Alasdair McIntyre and Tim Keller, Susannah’s influences lead her to resist modernity’s dehumanising tendencies with simple human practices that can easily be lived out, even in the big city. At the heart of her spiritual imagination is the creativity of God’s relational life, present in us as we participate in creation for the common good, rooted in praise and worship as communities of blessing.Susannah Black Roberts is Senior Editor at the international magazine Plough Quarterly and an editor at Mere Orthodoxy and has written for many publications including First Things, Front Porch Republic, and The American Conservative. A native Manhattanite married to an Englishman, she lives between New York and the West Midlands in the UK.Our work is only possible with your support. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to enable us to continue with the podcast.LinksFor Susannah Black Roberts:https://www.plough.com/en/authors/qr/susannah-black-robertshttps://mereorthodoxy.com/author/susannah-blackhttps://x.com/suzania?lang=enFor Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/abouthttps://www.themissionalnetwork.com/author/alan-roxburgh/https://journalofmissionalpractice.com/alan-roxburghTwitter: https://twitter.com/alanjroxburgh?lang=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksJoining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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