Stanley Hauerwas is regarded by many as one of the world’s most influential living theologians. Opinionated and outspoken, not least on his pacifist convictions, he was named America’s best theologian by Time magazine in 2001. Today – at 79 years old – he is Gilbert T Rowe Emeritus Professor of Divinity and Law at Duke University, North Carolina.

On a trip to London to give a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields-church, he shares his views on the perplexing, certainly to UK listeners, state of US politics at the moment. ‘I don’t think Trump has ever had a serious encounter with Jesus’, he says.