Spirituality is 'like football' whereas religion is like 'the football team'. So spoke Alan, aged 36 and living in south London, in an interview which was part of The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity's research project, Beyond Belief?
Beyond Belief? looked at the barriers and bridges to faith today, interviewing 40 agnostics of various hues in London and Nottingham, and examining what it was about Christians, the Church, society, contemporary culture, or individuals themselves which deterred people from embracing, exploring or even contemplating the Christian faith. The result was a fascinating and messy mixture of hostility, ignorance, the need for hope, consumer mentalities, 'totalitolerance', scepticism, social fears, 'guerrilla morality', a pervasive sense of the numinous, the 'need for new words', and a whole host of other social trends. Central to them all was Alan's fascinating idea of 'spiritual football'.
Persistent spiritual need
Alan's metaphor was brilliantly creative. Its implications, which he hardly needed to draw out, epitomised much of what he and his fellow respondents believed. For a start, and in spite of much deep-rooted anti-religious sentiment, which verged in some cases onto an active loathing of things Christian, most if not quite all of the respondents interviewed recognised some kind of spiritual need.
