The 2025 Selwyn Lectures, given by Michael Wakelin and the Revd Lucy Winkett, delivered both breadth and depth to the 150 clergy and others gathered in Lichfield Cathedral, with both speaking on ‘Where is truth, trust and transparency today?’
These are brief and incomplete summaries of what was said, to whet your appetite. Both contributions, and the deep discussion around questions afterwards are recorded and can be watched here or below:
Michael Wakelin
Michael Wakelin explored the erosion of trust across the whole of society, suggesting that the edifice of inherited trust that characterised the automatic trust reposed in people seen as in authority was built on sand and had been significantly eroded.
Where it was being renewed, this was on the basis of ruthless examination, making the trust earned and deserved. This ruthless examination was a significant role for traditional media and when younger people got there news from TikTok, where journalistic values were largely absent this was potentially problematic.
Trust in science had diminished through it no longer being seen as rigorous but often used to further commercial ends. Trust in religion was no longer automatic. Trust in general now came through networks, not hierarchies. These networks were themselves migrating into smaller tribal ecosystems where truths were contested, facts competed with feelings and algorithms favoured engagement over accuracy.
This broad survey of trust across society posed the challenge of where to look to see trust being rebuilt. Michael offered his experience, building the Religion Media Centre onto a trusted source of information and briefing after he left a long career at the BBC. Offering briefing and information into what was often a vacuum made worse by journalists working hard to fulfil their high caling against the constraints of shortage of time and manpower had proved successful, with 1.3 million page impressions. The conclusion that could be drawn was that religion and its reporting mattered.
Leaving us with a question about what eroding trust was a symptom of, he ended with a quote from Martin Luther King: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.
Revd Lucy Winkett
Revd Lucy began by framing a challenge: “How to preach good news in an era of fake news?” The disconnection of people from each other is a problem for the whole of society and therefore for the church. Broadcaster Jon Snow, speaking to the annual Edinburgh Television Festival in 2017 saw that we could head towards social media increasingly reinforcing prejudices and vitriolic echo chambers or through promoting media literacy, create a society where we were “as concerned with what we read as with what we eat.”
What is true for media literacy for the consumption of news is also true for Biblical literacy and the consumption or ingestion of preaching. That was eight years ago and the question is still as sharp and as unresolved.
Where is reliable information is to be found and when is it trustworthy? In the age of the proliferation of information, we are saying a lot in our churches and from our churches but what are we are saying as a public facing institution? We have our own challenges with public trust, biblical literacy and preaching.
The church no longer received automatic trust based on the position of clergy: it has to be earned. Often, but Revd Lucy said the church is often at its best when listening but she would address speaking up and speaking out in addressing “How do we speak good news in the age of fake news in a way that is truthful, trustworthy and transparent?”
Preaching is speaking into a crisis of attention in the information economy – there is so much information competing for our attention and the result is that we are attention poor – and exhausted.
Rather than telling the time ‘by the second hand’ as living in an exhausting 24-hour news agenda world demands, Revd Lucy pointed to the counter-cultural life of the church at its best, living life by the hour hand, no less contemporary or accurate, but finding a different pace and deeper level of understanding to convey.
In imagining the life of another, in imagining a future we engage in the spiritual task that Jesus referred to as seeing the Kingdom of God, apprehending the Kingdom of God, realising is was near or here.
Pointing to this, that things don’t have to be as they are, is both pointing to the heavenly banquet gathering all from every corner as well as a vision of society which draws all people to be nourished. In the eucharist we both remember the past, the but also invite people into that future.
In an age deluged by information where attention is in short supply, helping people to bear the weight of this knowledge in which truth can be found, is a profound service that the church can offer.