ABSTRACT
A busy Birmingham street. A reporter, microphone in hand, attempts to interview people for The One Show about their views on God and religion. They are shown running away and refusing to discuss it: ‘I don’t really talk about it’, ‘…only if I had to’; ‘We’d rather not answer’. Amidst this seeming embarrassment, the reporter distributes stickers saying ‘Do God’ and ‘Don’t do God’. At the end of her informal media survey she concludes that ‘God is winning’. In itself this is interesting given the way the topic was introduced to viewers – with pictures of empty church pews and statistics about church decline. But we are none the wiser about what God means to people and what it is they do or do not believe. What is obvious though is that most people are reluctant to talk about it in public. For most, it is a private matter.
