Chapter 1 Talk about faith in context Important moments in religions often come wrapped in epic stories: Moses coming down from the mountain with tablets in his hands, Mohammad returning to Mecca in 629, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. These stories are etched in the minds of religious believers because the represent ways of understanding how the supernatural interacts with humans. They become parts of sacred texts and doctrinal statements that define how people think about right beliefs and practices. They involve prophets and theologians and priests and religious leaders speaking the very word of God to people who listen and act on it. At the same time, the day-to-day experiences of religious believers include both the mundane and the sacred. Prayers might be chanted in ancient languages, but also muttered under the breath in moments of frustration. Talk about religious faith does, of course, happen within religious institutions, but it also occurs in the daily interaction of believers, whose conversations might include subtle references to sacred texts or . Believers might look to each other for advice and support, making decisions about what they should or shouldn't do depending on what those in their own faith community say. Sacred texts and doctrine about right practice and belief can come and go in these conversations, as people work to live out the ideals of their faith in the messy contexts of real life. The importance of interaction within religious communities was clearest to me as a university student when I was very involved in an Evangelical Christian campus ministry. The ministry was student-led, with a loose affiliation to a national association, and as a student leader, I organised a variety of different events throughout the week - prayer meetings, mentorship programmes, and large group meetings where we met for collective worship on Friday nights. One weekly meeting, an accountability group, met late on Wednesday nights. This particular meeting was for men only, with a women's group another time in the week, and was organised around eleven questions all the members would memorise and which we would all answer in turn. The questions ranged in topics from health and fitness to personal devotion to sexual purity, that topic often taking the most time in the meeting. These meetings became very important for the participants, where we laughed together and did practical theology and ethics, attempting to put into practice our faith and challenge one another. The meetings were not sanctioned by an institution - there was no instruction or Bible study. There was no explicit hierarchy or leadership, and although there were some members who were more consistent attenders, or older, or more pious, the conversations were those of friends, taking bits of theology, scripture, practical advice, and experience to piece together our Christian lives in the challenging university context, with alcohol, sex, and drugs constantly tempting us away from a pure life. The meetings grounded us in a community that supported and encouraged in a way that prayer meetings or sermons or collective worship didn't. In the accountability group, the real questions of faith were hashed out in the back-and-forth of our discussions about what we were facing in our lives and how we might live in light of the commitments we had made"--