In Depth:  Nick Spencer

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'.

'The blunt truth is that people increasingly see politics and Parliament as remote from their lives.'

In the 1960s the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase 'Global Village'.

It neatly embodied the growing awareness that talking to friends in Australia was as easy as having a chat over the garden fence. Its sense of intimacy and friendliness recommended it to an optimistic era and it passed quickly into the public's vocabulary.

Nigel Lawson once wrote that the NHS was the closest thing the English had to a religion. But is our health service built on the right foundations? Nick Spencer investigates...

Having spent five years convincing voters that New Labour was economically prudent, it was for the purpose of funding the health service that Gordon Brown decided openly to raise taxes and risk his party's hard-earned reputation for frugality.