In a major new documentary, William Crawley asks if religion has a future in Northern Ireland.

Losing Our Religion, on BBC One Northern Ireland on Monday, October 12 at 9pm, William travels the length and breadth of Northern Ireland to explore the relevance of religious ideas and practices in the lives of both believers and non-believers – and he reveals the role of religion in his own life, both past and present.

Losing Our Religion is the second programme made for BBC NI by DoubleBand Films in which William makes a personal journey into aspects of life here. The first film, Dying For A Drink, took an up-close look at our society’s relationship with alcohol. In both films, William makes a deeply personal exploration into his own and his family’s story.

Losing Our Religion seeks to make a similar investigation into our society’s relationship with religion, and, on the way, William reveals part of his own experience of faith and the church.

William wasn’t raised with religion, but at the age of 16 he underwent a religious conversion and began a lifelong fascination with religious ideas. Soon, while still a teenager, he was preaching in pulpits across Northern Ireland. In the documentary, he returns to some of the first pulpits he ever preached from. Eventually, he trained as a minister and theologian, preaching and teaching in churches and universities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Today, he no longer is a churchgoer. In Losing Our Religion, he tells the story of his changing understanding of faith and religion. He also goes back to church to see if he is missing anything – and to see how things have changed. He visits new churches that sound more like rock concerts, and meets young converts who are being baptised in the sea at the north coast. He visits the Belfast Islamic Centre and asks whether our Christian society here is ready to make room for other faiths, and considers whether Christian ceremonies that have marked the key moments in our lives are losing out to non-religious alternatives.

William Crawley says: “In some ways, my story is a very typical one. More and more people in Northern Ireland are rethinking—re-imagining—their understanding of faith and the traditional, organised houses of faith. That’s not always a journey away from God; it is often an expedition into new ways of speaking about God and new ways of following ‘the religious path’.

“For many of us in Northern Ireland, religion is a home which provides us with comfort and security. For others, it’s a prison they’ve escaped from. And for more and more, it’s a house of cards that has long since collapsed.

“In this film, we want to do justice to those very different understandings of religion—and to the growing number of people, particularly under-35-year-olds, who feel more comfortable being described as ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘religious’. What does it mean to be ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ in the 21st century in a place like Northern Ireland?

“Inevitably, this is a profoundly personal film for me. In some ways it has been the most personally challenging of this trilogy to make. I learned a lot about myself while visiting churches, mosques, and humanist gatherings—and the film forced me to ask questions about where my journey is likely to take me in the future.”

Director Brian Henry Martin from DoubleBand Films says: “We wanted to explore the future of religion in Northern Ireland, the role that churches play in a modern society and the role of faith in all our lives. William Crawley is our perfect guide on this journey, having been a non-believer, a convert, a preacher and now a questioner.

“It was very exciting to make the film with him because as well as exploring religious life in Northern Ireland; we were following William reflecting on his own spiritual journey. In making Losing Our Religion, we wanted the programme to appeal to everyone – believers and non-believers – and we hope it will be a real conversation-starter.”

Losing Our Religion, a DoubleBand Films production for BBC Northern Ireland. Is on BBC One Northern Ireland on Monday, October 12 at 9pm.