General questions get general answers: *what was your childhood like* produces *we were poor but we were happy*, and then a silence. These 32 questions about faith are specific enough to open your grandmother up. Belief, doubt and leaving are all part of this, and a question set that only asks about belief gets a very partial answer. Grandparents are often the easiest people to interview and the ones with the least time. Both of those are reasons to start this weekend.

Questions to ask

32 questions to ask about faith and belief

Before you start

32 questions in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten; do not try to get through them all.

  • Ask if you can record. Almost everyone says yes, and almost everyone forgets the recorder is there within ten minutes.
  • Sit beside them rather than opposite. It is easier to remember something difficult when nobody is watching your face.
  • Have a photograph to hand. A picture unlocks more than a question does.
  • Let silences run. The useful answer usually arrives about four seconds after you would normally rescue the pause.
  • Do not correct dates. Being wrong about the year is not the same as being wrong about the memory.
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Before you start

Most people ask your grandmother about faith once, get three sentences, and never ask again. Not because there is nothing to say — because the question was too big. "What was it like?" is impossible to answer. The questions below are small on purpose: they ask for one thing at a time, and they ask for detail rather than summary, because detail is what memory actually stores.

There are 32 here, in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten. You will not get through them all in one sitting and you should not try.

The questions work the same whether you are asking grandmother, mother, father, parent and yourself. What changes is not the question but how much they will say to you, so start with the group you think they will enjoy rather than the first one here.

Where it came from

  • What did you believe as a child, and who taught you?
  • What did the building look and smell like?
  • What were you made to do that you didn't understand?
  • Who was devout in the family, and who wasn't?
  • What was said about people who believed differently?

The practice

  • What did an ordinary Sunday involve?
  • What did you say before meals or bed?
  • Which songs or prayers do you still know by heart?
  • What did you dread?
  • What did you love about it?

Doubt

  • When did you first wonder whether it was true?
  • Did you tell anyone?
  • What happened to make you doubt?
  • Did anyone try to talk you out of it — or into it?
  • What did you decide?

When it mattered

  • When did faith help?
  • When did it fail you?
  • What did you pray for that you didn't get?
  • What did you pray for that you did?
  • Was there a moment you'd call religious, whatever you believe now?

The community

  • Who in that community was genuinely good?
  • Who was a hypocrite?
  • What did it give you besides belief?
  • Did you lose anything when you left, or when you stayed?

Passing it on

  • What did you want your children to believe?
  • Did you make them go?
  • Do you regret that either way?
  • What did you never explain?

Now

  • What do you believe now, if you had to say it plainly?
  • What do you think happens?
  • What would you want said at your funeral?
  • Is there anything you've never told anyone about this?

When they stop talking

Stop. Say that was hard, and mean it. Offer tea, change the subject, and come back another day — the recording will still be there. A conversation that ends kindly can be continued; one that ends badly usually cannot.

What Your Book Pro does here

Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.

These question sets are free to use and free to download, with no account. They are here because the recording is the part that cannot be done later, and it should not sit behind anything. When you have the recordings, Transcription turns them into clean verbatim and Themes from Bulk Audio finds what the material is actually about.

A professional oral historian at £150–£400 a day brings judgement about what to follow that a question list does not. What a list gives you is the courage to start, which is usually the actual obstacle.

Record their answers

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