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Is it honest for me to go and sit there on communion day and drink the wine and eat the bread while feeling it all to be mummery?

I am a vicar's daughter and still a practising member of the Church of England.

I came from a very loving home, had a happy life with no great aspirations, but going to the seminary changed me. There was a chunk of my childhood missing. Once I'd realised it wasn't for me, I still felt a tremendous pressure to continue for fear of letting everybody down.

I'm Ulster Presbyterian. We understand the need to work hard from an early age.

I have a group of people, about 40, in a local church in Surrey in England, who pray for me regularly.

I'm from a family with five kids in it, and my father almost became a Catholic priest. And my mother never went to church, but she's the best Christian I know. My siblings have all chosen different paths to or away from their spirituality.

I was brought up by an Episcopalian father and Presbyterian mother in nondenominational Army chapels all over the world and never really had much religious experience.

Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.

I meet people from really grand backgrounds who had horrible parents who took no interest in them, whereas I'm a working-class boy from Deptford who was worshipped by all my rellies. Everybody in my extended family helped to raise me, and I realise now how lucky I was to grow up among kind folk.

I became a minister of the Eucharist when I was 17. My parents aren't very strict Catholics, but for some reason I decided this is what I want to do, and I have kept it up.