If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet V.ii1
This chapter moves from theological insights into the nature of story into asking how to collect and analyse the stories of homeless people. Themes from the sociological study of everyday life include the importance and irregularities of conversation, the role of the researcher, the significance of the mundane, and research undertaken with a view to change minds. A range of authors are invoked to provide answers to questions such as ‘How do I persuade people to tell their stories to me?’ ‘What do I do with these stories having heard them?’ ‘What happens when I start to ask questions about God, or religion or spirituality?’ A trajectory from literature to practice must also include a consideration of research ethics, based partly in a comparable study of illness stories, including again the place of the author. This leads into a detailed description of how, where and when these stories were collected, including a reflection on the strengths and weaknesses associated with these particular methods.
An overview of sociological research with or without a religious dimension into how people live their lives day to day suggests themes of common interest with this theological exploration of homelessness. Most use some form of interview preceded often by a questionnaire, with results presented both by topic and under individual names. People remain as important as the ideas they express, and via these recorded conversations, their status as co-authors is acknowledged. In the American study Habits of the Heart, the authors also acknowledge their own involvement:
The people who let us into their homes and talked to us so freely during the course of our study are very much part of the authorship of this book. Their words appear in almost every chapter. They made us think things we never thought before. But we have tried to make sense of not only what we saw and heard in our research but also what we have experienced as lifetime members of American society. The story we tell is not just the story of those we interviewed. It is also our own.2
Similarly, Nigel Rapport in Diverse World-Views in an English Village records the story of his own involvement with the research: his need for a job and accommodation, how to participate in a locally based social life, the attempt at explaining who he was and what he hoped to do in ‘Wanet’, the difficulties and discomforts he encountered. There may also be involvement with an external ‘story’: in the case of Habits, with the text of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America of the 1830s; in the case of this book, with the Christian scriptures.
Observing, listening to and participating in conversations are central to Rapport’s work, but not simply as a methodological tool. He remarks that conversation is the most important way in which reality is maintained, that Doris and Sid make real the multiple facets and possibilities of their personalities through their talk.3 But just as certain of their world views are corroborated through conversation, so others are deliberately excluded. Conversation becomes a way of constructing or ensuring one’s own identity, perhaps at the same time as denying or abasing another’s. Miscommunication and misunderstanding amid the plethora of words is a function of the difference between form and meaning. Rapport exposes the superficial interpretation of shared meaning within conversation by contrast with the diverse nature of world views which are revealed beneath the surface. Form and meaning therefore remain distinct, and the writer delights in pointing up inconsistency and difference:
The beauty of the exchange for me is this confused tension between the surface exchange, the orderly conversational form … and the unique visions, the limitless avenues of thought, the wild disorders of contradiction that can be motivating the exchange, causing its regular re-occurrence, and dancing delightedly but invisibly around its expression.4
Without discarding the irregularities of everyday, Rapport defends his decision not to impose a ‘specious unity’ on the world which Doris and Sid inhabit, or to deny the ‘validity of its intricacy and detail’. He wishes to respect the complexity, diversity and idiosyncrasy of the society which he studies, and while by no means averse to analysis, these characteristics are to be left intact. His philosophical approach and style seek to:
keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause – wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was there already, something which, at least for the moment, cannot be explained and can barely be described.5
Identity, alienation and misunderstanding are also raised as concepts via Wikan’s Life among the Poor in Cairo. She describes poor people leading their lives surrounded by a culture whose values and attitudes are alien to them. Since they lack the strength to determine their own value system, they are powerless to resist an alien culture being imposed upon them.6 Some of the same dynamic is evident in Wanet, but the crucial difference is that characters are able to resist the imposition of another system. This study of homeless people indicated that they are much less likely to be able to do so.
The theme of the everyday in contrast to the universal is emphasised in Tim Jenkins’ Religion in English Everyday Life which contrasts a social anthropological method (which he favours) with that normally used by sociology of religion. In his analysis of the Kingswood Whit Walk he observes a less sharp division between the sacred and profane, and that the religious sphere is seen as part of wider human activity. There is a recognition of the importance of the particular over against the desire to universalise, and of the tendency to trivialise the exceptional:
Usually anomalies – or the lack of fit between the local way of life and the outsider’s assumptions – either pass unremarked or are experienced as stereotypic features of the local people, their quaintness, stubbornness and so forth. Yet recourse to such stereotypes explains nothing. It is a form of blindness to the perceptions and motivations that are expressed in everyday life, and which emerge in certain events.7
Jenkins is especially keen to point out the paucity of studies which exist about the life of the unrespectable. Those which do exist tend to maintain negative images and underplay any contradictions to these.8
Research with a view to shifting dominant world views is exemplified in Elizabeth Stuart’s book Chosen, which examines the experiences of gay Catholic clergy in Britain in 1993. In the introduction she sketches out a brief history of homosexuality within the Church of Rome and goes on to describe the project of the book. It is clear that this is to be more than just a factual survey. The book is designed so that the experience of gay clergy may be disseminated within the Church, that clergy may feel less isolated, that those in authority may understand the needs of their gay clergy, and that lay people undertake a degree of pastoral care. She explains the origins of the book:
LGCM [Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement] endeavours to be a voice for the voiceless and so the Roman Catholic Caucus became anxious to provide gay priests and seminarians with a ‘safe’ opportunity to share their stories. That was how this book was born. It does not claim to be a scientific survey. It does not claim to represent the views of all gay priests in Britain. It simply offers the stories and reflections of a group of British gay priests and seminarians who vary from one another in age, location, background, theology, attitude to sexuality and experience but who seem to share much in common.9
The intention to name God at the heart of this book derived from the encounter described in the Prologue. The fact of God’s centrality takes away nothing from the difficulties of analysis. If an account of everyday life based on qualitative methods is a complex process, then the attempt to collect stories about God becomes even more difficult. Trying to pin down the meaning of the words themselves – ‘spiritual’, ‘spirituality’, ‘religious experience’ – is like trying to plait fog, but the endeavour is necessary, not least because interviewees will hear and use all these terms in different ways. Indeed, on reflection, I found that in my own interview questions I had not used terms consistently. A possible pattern emerges that those who write under the aegis of spirituality begin with human experience and try to say more about humanity, whereas writers who talk about religious experience often use the concept of experience (and sometimes single experiences) to say more about God. I want to knit these together more.
Empirical studies like The Spirit of the Child draw on the same qualitative methods employed here. David Hay compares the terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’, finding that mention of the first prompts a warmer, broader and more inclusive reaction, whereas the word ‘religious’ brings with it connotations of public institutions and a mixed historical record.10 His working hypothesis includes the concept of ‘spiritual sensitivity’, or awareness-sensing, mystery-sensing and value-sensing.
Timothy Beardsworth compiles an account of the first one thousand reports about religious experiences given to the Religious Experience Research Unit (RERU) at Oxford. He puts his finger neatly on some of the ambiguities already illustrated – the difference between a religious experience as an event and religious experience as a means of interpretation. He also feels the need for some clarification of terms:
There is an ambiguity about the phrase ‘religious experience’, depending on how we take the word ‘experience’. If we interpret it on the analogy of phrases like ‘interesting experience’ or ‘harrowing experience’, then we shall think in terms of episodes occurring at certain times and in certain places; we shall talk of ‘a religious experience’ or ‘religious experiences’. On the other hand, one can argue, as a contributor did, ‘Religious experience is not something to be tied down to definite times and places; it is a way of looking at the world (and oneself) which colours, or should colour, all one’s thoughts and actions’.11
He writes that while his research was intended to focus on the second of these, inevitably data arrived with no differentiation. The main drawback of Beardsworth’s study is its continued implication of good and bad research subjects, illustrating an important theme for this book. Gender, marital status, age, and age at the time of the experience (if available) are given, but do not provide categories for analysis. In addition, there are designations based on professional employment, for example, ‘Rev’, ‘Major’, ‘Lt-Col’, ‘Dr’, ‘Nun’, and so on. There is no mention, for example, of ‘mother’ or ‘private soldier’ in the classification system, let alone ‘homeless’. The liberation theologies of black people, women and those marginalised by social-political-economic conditions recognise the particularity of experience which underlies all reflective thinking, and so, by extension, that concerned with questions of ultimate meaning.
Other pointers to religious experience which find echoes in these accounts are found in more extensive writing from philosophers of religion. From Swinburne, the concept of God simply being or doing something:
an experience which seems (epistemically) to the subject to be an experience of God (either of his just being there, or doing something or bringing about something) or of some other supernatural thing. The thing may be a person, such as Mary or Poseidon; or Heaven, or a ‘timeless reality beyond oneself’, or something equally mysterious and difficult to describe.12
And from Sheldrake, a specifically Christian definition of spirituality:
‘spirituality’ is the study of how individuals and groups appropriate traditional Christian beliefs about God, the human person, creation, and their interrelationship, and then express these in worship, fundamental values and life-style. Thus, spirituality is the whole of life viewed in terms of a conscious relationship with God, in Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Spirit and within the community of believers.13
The implication of this rather confused picture is that a generous understanding of terms should be expected, allowing speakers free imagination to create their own figures and themes, and only afterwards and with circumspection subjecting them to analysis. There is one caveat here: it makes little sense to consider religious experience apart from the context in which it occurred, and therefore the identity of the subject, particularly those considered marginal.
Explorations of the kind described in this book require that a keen critical eye be cast over the ethics of the entire research process, not least because theology demands that a level of ethical judgement be engaged. Without this sort of transparency, any conclusions risk an accusation of moral high ground, or worse of hypocrisy. Honesty is required in terms of the position and status of the researcher, the relationship between the researcher and researched, and the place of such data within an epistemological frame. I recognise already, however, that the statement of such objectives gives away to some extent the choice of such framing, but I will also show that this choice is in line with other narrative enquiry. There is also a risk of some sharp edges coming together between the social justice of liberation theologies and the postmodern analysis of stories. Some of these tensions are resolved in concluding chapters.
Given the importance of identity, my own position is described more fully as one of the characters in the research, whose (auto)biography appears later, forming one of the 12 participants. It is enough to say here that I recognise the inherent tensions arising between those who are homeless and a researcher whose house is automatically provided as a result of his job. In asking detailed and personal questions about someone’s lifestory could I also be taking away from those who are already marginalised the little they have to call their own in furtherance of a research project and a publication? In a different context, this is summed up rather well in the title of Kay Hawe’s educational article Exploring the Educational Experience of Muslim Girls: tales Told to Tourists – Should the White Researcher Stay at Home?14 Her conclusion is not to remain indoors, but that the kind of ethical discussion envisaged now is a precondition of this work.
One aspect of this is an awareness that issues of ‘voice’ and empowerment are far from simple, and that researchers have to learn to walk on uncomfortable ground. This includes the possibility of learning from those being studied, so that there are times ‘that I need to be silent, listen, and take responsibility for learning’15 and that ‘we can choose to write so that the voice of those we write about is respected, strong and true’.16 This is particularly the case here when some participants showed an almost overwhelming desire to tell their story, however painful, and when one interviewee (Caroline) was grateful that somebody was interested enough to ask at all. The responsibility and privilege of entering the world of another person is repaid by the researcher’s conscious enjoyment of it: ‘Take time along the way to stop and hear the roses’.17
This respectful process may also avoid further pathologisation of homeless people, in which their position as agents is always reduced to the status of victims. It equally prevents a reinforcement of the solidified category of ‘the homeless’, which, failing to recognise the variety of people and experiences which are designated by this phrase, adds further to the creation of an alien other.
One of the most comprehensive descriptions of narrative ethics is contained in Arthur Frank’s The Wounded Storyteller. Although focused on the stories of illness, it is easy to read across from disease to homelessness, including Frank’s own vulnerability as a cancer sufferer. He is keen to emphasise that he writes in ‘postmodern times’ and that one of its principle features is that ‘Postmodern times are when the capacity for telling one’s own story is reclaimed’.18 He goes further to describe theoretically the origin of such tensions concerning voice: ‘Post-colonialism in its most generalized form is the demand to speak rather than being spoken for and to represent oneself rather than being represented or, in the worst cases, rather than being effaced entirely’.19 It is by stories that we can reclaim our sense of self, and make sense of the ‘narrative wreckage’ of our lives during or after illness, and by extension, in the disruption of homelessness.
Frank sees three story types: the restitution narrative which is primarily modernist in its assumptions about cure or return; the chaos narrative and the quest narrative. The chaos narrative describes several of the stories of homeless people which I heard; indeed, Frank refers to them in this section as the ‘other’, on whom society places the blame for such narratives, and so avoids the massive social changes required to see the other as part of oneself. While the true chaos narrative may only be present in the silence of the gaps in conversation:
the mystery of the chaos narrative is its opening to faith: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5: 3). The greatest chaos stories are the first despairing verses of many of the Psalms; the Psalms’ message seems to be that the redemption of faith can only begin in chaos. Tragically, those who are most destitute are often beyond such solace. For the poor in spirit to recognize their blessedness, some reflective space is required, and that is what poverty, like unremitting pain, denies.20
This takes us to the heart of this exploration, and anticipates if not some of the conclusions, then the questions which these homeless stories pose. But there are also quest narratives in these stories – the notion of finding a voice to express oneself and one’s experiences, and doing this in a way which will witness to other people. Storytelling becomes an ethical act when it centres on being for the other, in an enterprise which goes beyond the Good Samaritan, or as Frank says: ‘Persons live for others because their own lives as humans require living in that way’.21 The telling and the listening mean that there is no longer a ‘self-story’ but only ‘self-other-stories’.
Finally, it is important to state that this work was carried out with the informed consent of participants and of the staff in the centres concerned. Participants were guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity within the remit of a piece of academic writing, and this was recorded at the start of each interview. Pseudonyms have been used for names of participants, other named individuals, and for the particular hostels and centres to which interviewees refer.
My curiosity and interest having been piqued by the event described in the Prologue, practical questions of how to conduct this research now came to the fore. This experience indicated that a qualitative method with its roots in narrative enquiry was a suitable tool to explore more fully what I had already felt. This approach answers the question: ‘Is there a need and desire to personalise the evaluation process by using research methods that emphasize personal face-to-face contact … [that] feel natural, informal and understandable to the participants?’22 The fieldwork implied by such methods is personal, direct, and holistic in its approach to the human subject; it also risks methodological imprecision. For example, the influence of the observer on the observed (the Heisenberg effect) is recognised as both a strength and a weakness, and the notion of reciprocity is also alluded to:
Observational techniques can be an important part of the methodological repertoire of evaluators, but these techniques are never entirely separate from the individuality of the evaluator doing the fieldwork. The observer always puts his or her mark on the observations, just as the experience of doing fieldwork leaves it mark on the observer.23
The valorisation of human existence, both the ordinary and extraordinary, and the possibility of its transformation, makes narrative inquiry a suitable vehicle for the analysis of the lived experience of homeless people: ‘Narrative inquirers study an individual’s experience in the world, and through the study, seek ways of enriching and transforming that experience for themselves and others.24
A very early difficulty lay in access to the subject group, so that notwithstanding my initial experience at the drop-in hostel, it was easier to meet potential interviewees in another housing project. Similarly, the fuzzy definitions of homelessness itself were in part answered by recourse to existing organizations for homeless people. Aubyn House was at the time a purpose-built complex of small one-bed and two-bed flats, with office space and a communal sitting room, managed jointly between the local Anglican Church (where I was curate) and Stonham Housing Association. Its remit was to provide accommodation and support for vulnerable single homeless people, particularly those who had offended and those at risk of offending. It was not a direct access hostel; referral from another agency was needed, though self-referral was possible. The management committee was responsible for the strategic direction of the organization, including the employment of a project director and key workers. I had been a member of this committee for a number of years before approaching the staff with details of what I wished to do. My relationship with the project staff had been developed over the same period, so there was already a degree of trust between us. While I knew few of the residents particularly well, my relations with the staff enabled me to short-circuit the process of getting to know people, though I recognised inherent disadvantages.
By the time I started the process of interviews, I had moved house and job. It made sense to use a second location from a practical point of view, and to provide a wider base of study. The St Piran’s Centre for homeless people was then a non-residential drop-in centre, offering hot meals, showers, laundry facilities, clean clothes and basic medical advice. The Centre opened in December 1994 as a part-conversion of a much older city centre church. Its essence was to provide informal support to all who came through its doors and specific advice (for example, on housing, on state benefits, on medical problems) if required or requested. The majority of people who used St Piran’s arrived with a background of housing need, but some really sought company and a friendly environment. Following a six-week training course I worked for several months one morning per week as an ordinary volunteer (a floor worker) simply chatting to those who used the facilities. During this period, entry to the Centre was tightened to include only those in real housing need – those sleeping rough and those with no cooking facilities. The staff and other volunteers were aware of my wish to interview users of the Centre. Both Centres have subsequently changed considerably in their remit.
Using semi-structured interviews, I decided therefore to focus on homelessness and spirituality, and ask questions around each. I was particularly interested in how it felt to be homeless, as well as the events that led to homelessness; equally, what feelings were around the issues of spirituality rather than any theoretical discussion. I had four questions in my mind, therefore, which if not asked directly, I wished to cover in the course of the interview: how did you come to be homeless at some point in your life? What did that feel like? Can you describe anything to do with spirituality in connection with when you were homeless? What feelings were associated with these thoughts or experiences?
Given my different involvement in these two projects, the selection of interviewees differed somewhat. At Aubyn House I relied to a large degree on the advice of staff, who having understood the nature of what I wished to achieve, selected residents from a range of experience and age, and a balance of genders. At St Piran’s, with first-hand experience of Centre users, I was much more in control of selection, but also used staff guidance about who might wish to speak to me. Since I erred on the side of caution in trying to build up trust before asking for an interview, this limited my pool of potential interviewees to those with whom I talked regularly, and those who used the Centre on a Friday. This is, however, consistent with my desire to maintain respect with the subject group. One indication that this approach was fruitful is perhaps that nobody refused my request for an interview. At St Piran’s sustained observation of the users and of the functioning of the Centre was easier than at Aubyn House.
I interviewed eleven people in total, seven from Aubyn House, four from St Piran’s; seven men and four women, in an age range of 20 to 60 years old.25 The practice of the interview was largely similar in both locations. At Aubyn House we used the communal sitting room as a quiet, private place (we were interrupted once), while at St Piran’s we used either an upstairs office or a private chapel in the main body of the church. Interviews were tape-recorded with permission of the interviewee, with two exceptions (Tim and Geoff) who preferred written notes. In each case the interview was opened in a similar way: an introduction to the project, an overview of the kind of areas I was interested in talking about (what led them to Aubyn House or St Piran’s, what the experience felt like, whether there was any spiritual insight or reflection they might wish to share in relation to this), and an assurance of confidentiality in terms of changing names and any identifiable reference when circulation of the material widened. My own angle was always clarified – I explained who I was and why I wished to do the interview.
It is in the nature of this kind of research to be criticised on the grounds of objectivity and loose methodology; for example relying (or partly relying) on staff to recommend suitable subjects interposes another layer between the researcher and the interviewee. A more serious theoretical weakness is the verification, or validation, of the data; in other words, the extent to which the analysis of the data can be trusted. The process of triangulation approaches data from different perspectives or with different theories, but part of the verification process is also to be honest about rival explanations and examples which contradict the main conclusions. The ideal would be to check out the results at various stages with those interviewed, but given the transient lives of homeless people, there was little practical possibility of this. An alternative was to use a group of key workers to comment on the findings, and add their own reflections. Two meetings were held at St Piran’s with staff who had had the opportunity to review and comment upon the analysis of the research data.
The team broadly supported my analysis, but wished to add a sub-heading of education and literacy (or the absence of it) as an important factor which contributes to why people pass through a Centre like St Piran’s. This was mentioned in passing by three interviewees here – Caroline, Geoff and Julie. A further study would probe more deeply into the significance of school within individual life histories. The team suggested starkly the absence of emotional relationships (the numbness suggested here by Charlie and Jim) and the denial of love, and also noted the detrimental effect such an emotional environment has on staff members, not least the average professional burn-out time of two years. One remark about the difficulty in picturing individuals led me to include the short life-history section. I am grateful for the answer to my question about the truthfulness of such clients – that complete confabulation was very rare – which reinforces the impression I had at the time of the interviews and later. Transformation or change, whether of the clients or their situations, was clearly important for all three workers:
Given my Christian beliefs, I interpret this as meaning ‘reform’. Jesus never left the needy person how he found them, for example when he healed the sick. It can be a series of very small steps and a slow process.
I see this as like the question asked by Jesus, ‘What do you want me to do for you?
The last word should go the deputy manager of the project who commented that, ‘The group who come here are experts at being homeless’.
A second exploration of homeless people’s experience was also undertaken, with more particular emphasis on biblical interpretation, or reading the Bible together. Susannah Cornwall and I used the Contextual Bible Study (CBS) model (as described by Gerald West and John Riches) with a group of homeless and vulnerably housed people at a soup kitchen in South West England.26 After the initial phase of food and drink, participants were invited to join firstly some icebreaker activities and then to listen to a passage of scripture read aloud, after which they were asked for comments. Conversation and discussion followed. About one-fifth of regular users participated in these study sessions; 13 different people took part over the four study sessions; 11 agreed to their words being used; nobody took part in all four sessions. The passages were all chosen from St Luke’s Gospel with an overall theme of justice and exclusion. While there was a little frustration when certain individuals attempted to dominate discussions, the tone overall was good-natured with moments of humour. Concentration and focus were maintained by limiting each study to about 40 minutes. Soup kitchen volunteers were present throughout, but contributed in a minimal way. The sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed.
While methodological issues were recognised concerning the transient nature of users of a soup kitchen and the coherence or not of a ‘homeless community’, nevertheless the process of CBS is considered valuable, especially with those whose voices and opinions may have been disregarded. There was some evident satisfaction during the sessions, and some participants commented that they had enjoyed them. Riches notes:
What is striking for most people who encounter the [CBS] method for the first time is that it is a (largely) non-directive form of reading … It enables the group members to make the language and the imagery of the text their own, before they proceed to make connections between it and their own experience. For many this is empowering: people who have lost confidence in their ability to talk about their faith discover that the stories, images and ideas of the Bible can help to illumine their concerns and experience.27
Results and analysis of this exploration are found separately in Chapter 9.
This chapter has considered further elements in the pursuit of an analysis of the stories which homeless people tell. Collecting the stories of the vulnerable, even when sometimes there is hope and recovery, has something of the Pied Piper about it. The sense that the appeal of the tune in some way belies the reality of the intention – that these stories are now trapped and open to exploitation – leaves the collector with a sense of unease. The Wounded Storyteller does not assuage this, but confronts the moral dimension, allowing the researcher some leeway in the creation of space to allow these utterances of homeless people to be heard, valued and explored. Other writers quoted here from the domain of the social sciences give backing to an inter-disciplinary approach which respects the significance of the human story, its relationship to appropriate ‘external’ texts and the story of the researchers themselves. Rapport draws conclusions about the multiple world views which his conversations reveal; he delights in the diverse and eccentric, seeing these as akin to poetry in their expression of the human condition. Stuart deals with sensitive, personal material but engages with it in a strongly felt campaign. Jenkins too favours a more discursive, qualitative method than sociology of religion usually allows, with the reminder that poor people are marginalised again as research subjects. They lack the strength to determine and maintain their own value system.
Those who write about spirituality and religious experience tend to have a narrower focus than the one adopted here in respect of story. They have built their arguments around single or multiple experiences which can be designated by subject or researcher as religious; or an interpretation of the world has to be consciously in relationship with God, to use Sheldrake’s word. This contrasts with the broad view of the previous chapters that we are already within God’s story, but the telling and hearing of other human stories adds to knowledge of God and self, and has potential to change the world.
1 William Shakespeare, Hamlet V.ii, in Complete Works of William Shakespeare (London: Abbey Library, 1978), p. 882.
2 Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), p. xlv.
3 Nigel Rapport, Diverse World-Views in an English Village (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), p. 152.
4 Rapport, World-Views, p. 163.
5 Ibid., p. 199.
6 Unni Wikan, Life among the Poor in Cairo (English translation. London: Tavistock Publications, 1980), p. 42.
7 Timothy Jenkins, Religion in English Everyday Life (Oxford: Berghahn, 1999), p. 77.
8 Ibid., p. 192.
9 Elizabeth Stuart, Chosen (London: Chapman, 1993), p. ix.
10 David Hay with Rebecca Nye, The Spirit of the Child (London: Fount, 1998), pp. 5–6.
11 Timothy Beardsworth, A Sense of Perception (Oxford: Religious Experience Research Unit, 1977), p. vii.
12 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 246.
13 Philip Sheldrake, ‘Spirituality as an Academic Discipline’ in Adrian Thatcher (ed.), Spirituality and the Curriculum (London: Cassell, 1999), p. 59.
14 K.F. Haw, ‘Exploring the Educational Experience of Muslim Girls: Tales Told to Tourists – Should the White Researcher Stay at Home?’, British Educational Research Journal 22/3 (June 1996): 319–30.
15 A. Dewar, Will All the Generic Women in Sport Please Stand Up? Challenges Facing Feminist Sport Sociology, Quest 45 (1993): 222.
16 Lisa Richardson, Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences (London: Sage, 1990), p. 38.
17 Michael Patton, How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation (London: Sage Publications, 1987), p. 143.
18 Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1995), p. 7.
19 Ibid., p. 13.
20 Ibid., p. 114.
21 Ibid., p. 15.
22 Patton, Qualitative Methods, p. 41.
23 Ibid., p. 106.
24 D. Jean Clandinin and Jerry Rosiek, ‘Mapping a Landscape of Narrative Inquiry’ in D. Jean Clandinin (ed.) Handbook of Narrative Inquiry (London: Sage, 2007), p. 42.
25 In alphabetical order of subject the interviews were as follows. Age at the time of the interview is in brackets. These and other names in the text are pseudonyms: Caroline (20) Aubyn House, Charlie (44) Aubyn House, Danni (23) Aubyn House, Fran (25) Aubyn House, Geoff (54) St Piran’s, Julie (45) Aubyn House, Jim (43) St Piran’s, Marc (30) Aubyn House, Pete (60) Aubyn House, Richard (52) St Piran’s, Tim (57) St Piran’s.
26 See Susannah Cornwall and David Nixon, ‘Readings from the Road: Contextual Bible Study with a Group of Homeless and Vulnerably-Housed People’, The Expository Times 123/1 (2011): 12–19. John Riches, ‘Worship Resources: Contextual Bible Study: Some Reflections’, The Expository Times 117 (2005): 23–6. Gerald West and Ujamaa Centre staff, Doing Contextual Bible Study: A Resource Manual (The Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research [formerly the Institute for the Study of the Bible and Worker Ministry Project], 2007).
27 Riches, ‘Worship Resources’, p. 23.