Bishop John Sentamu

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2003

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is The Bishop of Birmingham, John Sentamu. When John Sentamu was born, the sixth of 13 children, near Kampala in Uganda in 1949, he was so small the local bishop was called in to baptise him immediately. He survived his birth, a sickly childhood and a famine to become, a mere 25 years later, a judge in the Uganda High Court. In 1974 he managed to get a visa to leave Uganda and come to Britain where he studied theology with a view to returning to the Ugandan justice system at the end of his studies. However, when his friend the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum was murdered he vowed "You kill my friend, I take his place", and he was ordained in 1979. He served in parishes in Cambridge and London, and was vicar of Holy Trinity Church in South London for 13 years during which time he raised £1.6 million to restore his church and its organ as well as increasing his congregation tenfold. He is now the Bishop of Birmingham, and one of only two senior bishops from ethnic minorities. He was an advisor to the Stephen Lawrence Judicial Inquiry and the Chairman of the Damilola Taylor Review board. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: I Was Glad by Sir Hubert Parry Book: The Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis Luxury: A kitchen

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kesti Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive for rights reasons
0:06.0	We've had to shorten the music
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2003 and the presenter was Sue Lawley
0:14.0	Music
0:24.0	My cost away this week is a bishop
0:26.0	I am a man, he says I am from Africa, I am black, I am a Christian
0:30.0	There's a big mix in there
0:32.0	He came here from Uganda where he'd suffered at the hands of EDR mean the country's dictator
0:37.0	He became a priest, luring his parishioners with music and charisma
0:41.0	But he suffered here too, the national front tried to burn his house down
0:45.0	But they, like EDR mean, were no match for the vicar who by his own admission is a prisoner of hope
0:51.0	He went on to criticise his own church for its attitude on race, to chair a review on how the damalola Taylor murder was handled
0:58.0	And last year to become bishop of Birmingham
1:01.0	The first black cleric to reach such a senior position in the Church of England
1:06.0	His achievements, he believes, are simply those of a man putting back some of what he's been given
1:12.0	Incomers like myself have a duty, he says
1:15.0	Whatever rights I have here have to be earned
1:18.0	He is the right reverend John Centimoo
1:21.0	You're also a bishop, a man who loves music, in fact you write music
1:25.0	Yes, I've written some settings to the TDM which is one of the Church of England's greatest piece of praise for some Psalms
1:33.0	As a child, my mother used to sing quite a lot
1:37.0	And because there were 13 of us, we all had to land different songs to allow all our younger ones to bed
	...

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