When he was at school, Robert Beckford’s ambition was to be a professional footballer. There are a few people who no doubt wish he’d pursued that path.
As it is his RE teacher turned him on to religion and culture and his Communist maths teacher introduced him to politics and the work of Malcom X. Robert Beckford was hooked, and is now one of the country’s most outspoken black theologians.
Now aged 41, his CV is an impressive one: academic, theologian, broadcaster, film-maker and lecturer.
Until the beginning of this year he was a lecturer in African Diasporan Religions and Cultures at the University of Birmingham. In January he moved universities and now lectures at Oxford Brookes University.
He was a presenter of BBC Radio WM’s Sunday Breakfast Show and Saturday night’s African Caribbean programme but he fell out of love with the BBC in a fairly public exchange earlier this year. He failed to agree a new contract and left the station, accusing the BBC of ignoring the needs of the black community – something which they denied.
On Christmas Day 2004, Robert Beckford hosted a documentary called Who Wrote the Bible? on Channel 4 which challenged accepted wisdoms concerning the Bible and explored academic theological research into the Bible’s unexamined history of revision, exclusion and political imperative.
The documentary established Robert Beckford as a credible film maker and last year he hosted two more documentaries for Channel 4. The Passion: Films, Faith and Fury explored the uneasy relationship between religion and the cinema and the controversy that inevitably surrounds any religiously-themed film.
The Secret Family of Jesus, broadcast last Christmas, explored Jesus’ family history, presenting historical evidence of Christ’s familial relationship to John the Baptist, the existence of four brothers and at least two sisters, his relationship with Mary Magdalene and the theory that Jesus’ ministry passed to his elder brother, James.
He has also made films about racial equality and Britain’s colonial history. Never afraid to pitch into sensitive areas he hosted a BBC debate on the issues behind the 2005 disturbances in Lozells, is on record as calling the Church of England "inherently racist" and believes the slave trade remains a significant scar on Britain’s imperial past.
He has even occasionally had harsh words for the black Pentecostal movement he was born into and raised in, saying it needs to be more socially engaged. Having spent much of his academic life developing black clergy he feels he has earned the right to be critical.
