Fred Stella welcomes Roger Straughan to Common Threads to discuss the phenomenon of communicating with those who have gone before us as explored in his book ‘The Medium and the Minister.’
The Medium and the Minister looks into the psychical and religious approaches to the possibility of an afterlife. The tensions and conflicts between these two approaches and the heated controversies they have generated are illustrated by a number of case studies. These focus on the challenges posed by psychical research and spiritualism to orthodox religion as the ultimate authority for information and teaching about the afterlife
Roger Straughan's career has been spent teaching in schools, colleges and universities, culminating in his holding the post of Reader in Education at the University of Reading, UK, specializing in the philosophy of education. He gained an MA and Ph.D (London) in that subject, together with an MA in Classics (Cambridge). His university research has led to the writing and editing of many books and articles on issues in education, philosophy and ethics, and he has given invited papers at many international conferences. Psychical questions have also been a life-long interest, and he is an active member of a number of societies and organizations concerned with psychical and spiritual matters. He has been invited to speak at major conferences and has published journal articles and reviews on these subjects, and also on Conan Doyle.
