EARLIER this year, BBC2 screened a three-part series called Pilgrimage - the Road to Santiago. Among the participants was Raphael Rowe, who had been convicted of murder and spent some time in prison before the conviction was quashed and he was exonerated. When asked by Kate Bottley how he had coped with this and what had kept him going, Raphael replied "hope". However bad things were, he continued to hope for a better future, and the hope stayed with him. Kate's reply was: "What you call hope, I call God".

Now, Raphael didn't like this at all. "She only said that" he said, "because she wants me to believe what she believes". Like many other people, he would not want to engage with the language of faith. To describe God as the personification of hope would be anathema to him. Why?

Well, one topic of the discussion during the pilgrimage was the idea of religion - and particularly Christianity - as a control mechanism. The church was seen as existing to control what people believe, how they understand God, how they worship and how they behave. Yet the message of Christ is something very different. God is love, and this is a love which sets us free - free to recognise and respond to the presence of God however we can in our own lives. And whatever Raphael believes or does not believe, and however he describes his belief, the hope which he finds within himself is surely in a very real sense his salvation.

Alvene and John Costello, Carver Uniting Church, Windermere