This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
I went to see Bob Dylan in Liverpool last night. Oddly enough, it felt to me like he was sandwiched between the election of a party leader on Saturday and an American President this week. For decades Dylan has questioned power and the motivations of the people who wield it. Prophesying through his pen – in hundreds of songs – he applies the poet’s eyes and ears to what most of us either can’t see or can’t find the words to express.
This is the role of the prophet: to speak truth without fear or favour, in season and out of season. In this way the poet shines a light into reality, not seeking votes or power, but using the power of words and image to question and to illuminate real motivations – subverting the noise and claims to power that abound in times of confusion or conflict.
I wonder how this might apply to the new leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, as she seeks to renew a battered party for the future – and in the wake of significant loss. Or the next President of the United States as a deeply divided country handles truth in a discourse that almost has to be polarized to be heard. If leadership is to be prophetic – in the sense of enabling people to face reality and hear what might be uncomfortable – what price any attempt to unite under a single banner? If leadership has to be visionary – that is, shining a light on what the future might look like if a particular common path is to be walked down – how might a vision be proffered while the current conflicts are still raging?
Well, we shall see. But, common to both will be the place of truth telling and truth hearing. Prophetic leaders always have faced the same challenge. Moses led his people out of centuries of slavery only to have them complaining, looking for alternative leaders who would give them what they want NOW, and romanticizing the past’s agonies. Jesus stands in silence before his judge, Pontius Pilate, who then finds himself being judged by the one who will not provide easy answers.
Leadership, then, is never a means to becoming popular. Telling the truth rarely is. George Orwell’s lines, etched into the wall of the BBC itself might be true, but is often only welcome when applied to someone else: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Well, back to Dylan. The tempests of our modern times might be unique, but they still demand the rough and rowdy ways of the prophetic poets.
