53 Quotes by Alan Green

The [book of the bible] Song Of Songs is an amazing erotic love poem that the church has tried very hard not to notice. It is really beautiful, and musical in its poetry.

I grew up in the church, with traditional hymns, but at the same time I was beginning to listen to pop music, the mid-60s, The Beatles, which had just as much influence on me as those hymns did. Then the hippy stuff like Pink Floyd started to raise questions about how I lived my life and the world in which I lived.

As a teenager I was very clear that I wasn't in the church just to toe the line, but I saw there was a capacity within Christianity and the bible not to fall into line but to question the status quo, that's what kept me in the church. I was listening to the sort of music that did that questioning.

That level of expectation that I'm going to be conservative is really disappointing, but it is how many people think about clergy and the church

I'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.

I want to be able to open up the really good treasures of the Church and Christianity to people, and that's not going to be achieved by shouting at them to convert or they'll go to hell. It's about giving them an opportunity to reimagine Christianity.

Spirituality is a natural part of ourselves, as natural as emotions, but we've got all the language wrong and made this divide between secularism and spirituality, whereas instead it's about being human.

I think what we're really bad at doing is recognising that it is possible to have lost of different views within the church.

Phil Dowd checks his whistle and blows his watch.