Questions to Ask About Faith
Good questions to ask someone about their faith when you want to understand what they believe and how they live it, whether or not you share their tradition. The list starts with what faith means to them and how they came to it, moves through practice, community and daily life, takes on the questions believers are asked most (science, suffering, miracles, other religions), and ends with doubt and hope. Anyone choosing questions to ask in an interview about religion, for a class or a profile, will find in the first three groups the ones that give the outline of a tradition as well as one person's account of it: how it began, its branches, who leads, what happens at a wedding or a funeral. If you are the one being asked about your faith, it works as a list to prepare from.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Starting points
What does faith mean to you?
Why ask it
People use the word for trust, for a set of beliefs, for a community and for a habit of turning up, often all four at once. Whichever one they reach for first tells you which of your later questions will land and which will miss.
Did you grow up in your faith, or did you come to it on your own?
Why ask it
Both answers open a story: the house they were raised in, or the year something shifted. If they inherited it, ask when it began to feel like theirs and not their parents'.
Who taught you what a faithful life looks like?
Why ask it
People learn faith from someone specific: a grandmother, a youth leader, a neighbor who kept turning up. The character they describe defines their standard more precisely than any statement of belief.
What part does your faith play in an ordinary day?
Why ask it
An ordinary day has no service to go to, so the answer is whatever they actually do: a prayer before the commute, a verse stuck to the fridge, nothing anyone could see. Someone whose faith shows up mainly at holidays will usually say so, and it helps to know that before you ask anything heavier.
If someone asked why you believe, what would you say first?
Why ask it
Reasons come in an order, and the first one out is seldom an argument. More often it is a person, an experience or a memory of being helped, which shows you what counts as evidence for them. Leave the rebuttal at home.
Is faith the same thing as religion for you, or are they different?
Why ask it
Some people use the two words interchangeably. Others have kept the faith and left the institution, or keep the rituals while unsure of the belief. If they separate them, ask which one they would hold on to if they could only keep one.
Is your faith in a God you could describe, or in something harder to name?
Why ask it
Two people who both say they believe in God can mean a father, a presence, a force or a mystery with no picture at all. Someone whose tradition has many gods, or none, will tell you what stands in that place. Let them do the describing, and don't hand them a picture to accept or reject.
What is the one belief everything else rests on for you?
Why ask it
A tradition may hold hundreds of teachings while a person carries a handful. The one they name as the foundation shows what could be taken away without the rest falling, and what could not.
Is there a moment you can point to when your faith became real to you?
Why ask it
Some people have a date and a place, and others describe a slow settling they only noticed afterwards. Don't press for a dramatic story if there isn't one. Gradual is an ordinary answer and no less serious.
What do you call yourself when someone asks what you are?
Why ask it
Labels carry weight: a denomination's name, 'practicing', 'lapsed', 'spiritual', 'just Christian', 'culturally Jewish'. The word they choose, and the one they steer around, tells you how to refer to their faith for the rest of the conversation.
How should I refer to you and your religion if I write this up?
Why ask it
A report that calls someone devout when they would say observant, or files them under the wrong branch, has gone wrong before its second paragraph. Asking also gets you the spellings and whether they want their name used at all.
For someone who knows nothing about your religion, what are the two or three things to understand first?
Why ask it
It hands them the job of choosing the outline, and what they choose is often not what a textbook leads with. Write the points down in the order given, because the order is part of the answer.
How did your religion begin, as you were taught it?
Why ask it
'As you were taught it' asks for the account they grew up hearing, which an interview can give you and a reference book cannot. Check names, dates and spellings afterwards against a source the person would recognize.
What does your religion say a person is here to do?
Why ask it
It is the purpose-of-life question in a form that can be answered in a sentence or two. Get the teaching first and their own version of it second, and mark in your notes which is which.
Practice
Which story or passage do you find yourself coming back to?
Why ask it
The text people return to is usually the one that met them during something hard, so this tends to produce a story rather than a citation. The reason will matter more than the passage.
How do you read your scripture: as literal history, as teaching told through stories, or some of each?
Why ask it
People who sit side by side at the same service can differ on this, and it shapes how they will answer anything later about science or other religions. If their tradition has no single book, they will tell you what carries that authority instead: a teacher, a body of law, a practice. Ask which parts they read which way, and keep your own verdict out of it.
Which practices genuinely help, and which ones feel like going through the motions?
Why ask it
Naming both halves gives permission to be honest. Plenty of regular attenders have one ritual that leaves them cold, and admitting it is often the point where the conversation stops being polite and starts being real.
How do you pray: set words, your own words, or silence?
Why ask it
The three options turn it into a question about method, which is far easier to answer than what prayer is. Someone who does not pray, or whose tradition would say meditate or chant, can tell you so without feeling they have failed a test.
Is there a prayer, hymn or chant you know by heart?
Why ask it
Words learned by heart are usually the oldest layer of a person's faith, picked up before they were old enough to weigh them. Ask where they learned it and whether they still mean it when they say it.
How do the holidays or seasons shape your year?
Why ask it
The calendar is the easiest part of a faith to talk about, and it comes with detail: who travels, what gets cooked, which observances they keep strictly and which they have quietly let go.
Is there a day of rest, a fast or a food rule you keep, and what does keeping it cost you?
Why ask it
These are the parts of faith that coworkers and friends can see, and sometimes tease. The cost is where the answer lives: a missed match, an awkward lunch, a hungry afternoon. Most people are glad to explain a practice they are normally only asked to justify.
Where do you go when you need your faith to feel near?
Why ask it
A sanctuary, a kitchen table, a stretch of trail, the car before work. You find out whether their faith lives mainly in a building or travels with them. If the place is nearby, ask whether they would show it to you.
What does your faith ask you to do with your money and your time?
Why ask it
Tithing, almsgiving, volunteering and hours of observance are where belief turns into a budget. Ask about what they do and stay away from amounts. A short answer means it is private, and you can move on.
Is there a word in your tradition that does not translate well, and what does it mean to you?
Why ask it
Nearly every religion has terms that lose something in English, and explaining one tends to become a small lesson in how the whole thing fits together. Use their word in your write-up with their explanation beside it.
Is there something you wear, carry or keep at home because of your religion?
Why ask it
Objects are easy to describe and easy to write about: a head covering, a string of beads, a text fixed to the doorpost, a small shrine on a shelf. Ask before you photograph or touch anything, and ask whether there is a way of handling it that a visitor would get wrong.
What happens in your tradition at a birth, a coming of age, a wedding and a funeral?
Why ask it
Four occasions supply the most concrete material an interview can gather: what is said, who has to be there, what is worn or eaten. Let them choose the one they know best and describe a real day they were present for.
Community
How did you find the community you belong to now?
Why ask it
People join for reasons that have little to do with doctrine: a friend asked them, it was near home, the children were made welcome. If they have no community at present, ask what they would look for in one, which is often the more telling answer.
What would you miss most if you left your community?
Why ask it
Belonging and belief can come apart, and this question separates them. An answer about one person, a volunteer shift or a particular room says more about what holds them than a creed would.
What would I see if I came along with you one week?
Why ask it
It asks for a description and often earns an invitation, which you are free to take up or not. They will tell you where a visitor sits, what to wear, and which part they would be a little nervous for you to see.
What does your community do for people who aren't part of it?
Why ask it
You are after last month, not the mission statement: a food bank shift, visits to someone ill, a collection after a flood. Some communities do a great deal of this and others are mostly about worship and looking after their own, and members tend to be candid about which theirs is.
Does your family share your faith, and what happens at the table when they don't?
Why ask it
Differences inside a family tend to be managed by an unspoken treaty: who says grace, which subjects get skipped, who attends what. The terms of that treaty are more interesting than who is right. Go gently if there is an estrangement behind it.
Are there people close to you who believe something very different, or nothing at all?
Why ask it
A name tells you more than a position on tolerance. Someone whose closest friend is an atheist, or whose brother converted to another religion, has had to work out in practice what they think of people outside their faith.
What do people usually get wrong about your tradition?
Why ask it
It lets them correct the record without having to defend the whole tradition. The misconception they pick tells you which criticism they hear most often, and whether it comes from strangers, the news or their own relatives.
How do you explain all this to a child, or to someone new?
Why ask it
Teaching forces people to say what is central. Watch what they simplify and what they refuse to simplify, because that ordering is their working theology.
What are the main branches or schools within your religion, and which one is yours?
Why ask it
Most traditions are a family of groups that disagree about something, and a paper that treats them as one will be corrected by the first reader who belongs to another. The useful follow-up is what the difference looks like in a normal week, more than how the split came about.
Who leads your community, and how does a person come to hold that role?
Why ask it
Some communities ordain, some elect, and some have no clergy at all, which explains a good deal about how decisions get made. Then ask who they personally take a question to. It is not always the same person.
How has your community changed in the years you have known it?
Why ask it
This is history at a scale one person can vouch for: who has joined or left, which language the services are held in now, which arguments have been settled. Older interviewees often have the most to say, so leave time for it.
Daily life
When you had a big decision to make, did your faith come into it directly?
Why ask it
It works best about one real decision: a move, a job, a marriage. Some people prayed or fasted over it, some went to an elder, and some will say honestly that faith only came in afterwards, when they were making sense of how it turned out.
Does your faith make a difference to how you do your job?
Why ask it
Work is where most people's faith goes unspoken, so the answer is usually about small things: honesty over a number, patience with one colleague, a day they will not work. 'Not really' is common, and worth accepting as it stands.
How open are you about your faith with people who don't know you well?
Why ask it
One person wears it on a necklace and another has colleagues of ten years who have no idea. The reason for keeping quiet, whether fear of being judged or a dislike of display, tells you what reception they have learned to expect, yours included.
What is it like to practice your religion where you live now?
Why ask it
The same faith is lived one way as the majority in a town and another way as a handful of families. You will hear about the distance to a place of worship, time off for holy days and how neighbors react, all of which ties the interview to a place.
Has your faith ever asked you to forgive someone when you didn't want to?
Why ask it
Most traditions teach forgiveness and few people find it easy, so a yes usually comes with a story about how long it took. You don't need the name or the offense. What you are listening for is whether the teaching changed what they did.
Does your faith help when you are anxious or afraid?
Why ask it
Fear is where a great deal of faith does its daily work: a repeated phrase, a slow breath, a sense of not being alone with it. If they say it does not help much, take that at face value. It is an honest report and nothing to fix.
When you were grieving, what actually helped?
Why ask it
Grief is where ritual either worked or failed, and people remember which in detail. Expect concrete answers: someone sat with them, a prayer was said daily, food arrived without being asked for. Keep it for a loss they have already mentioned and that is some way behind them.
What would be missing from your life without your faith?
Why ask it
Subtracting it shows what it actually supplies: a calendar, a compass, a people, someone to thank. A person with no religion can answer the same question about whatever fills that place for them, which makes it a good one to trade.
Which part of your faith would you most want to pass on?
Why ask it
What a person hopes to hand down is rarely the whole package. Usually it is one habit, one story or a way of treating people, and in choosing it they quietly admit which parts they could let go.
Hard questions
Is faith a choice, a gift, or something that happened to you?
Why ask it
This is the kind way of asking whether faith is blind. Someone who says choice will talk about reasons, someone who says gift will talk about grace or luck, and a long pause may mean nobody has asked them before.
Is there any tension for you between what you believe and what you know from science?
Why ask it
'Is there any' leaves room for the answer no, which is the one many believers give: for them the two are answering different questions. If there is a sore spot, such as evolution, the age of the earth or miracles, they will name it themselves, and that is the one worth asking about.
How does your faith account for the suffering of people who did nothing to deserve it?
Why ask it
It is one of the oldest objections to belief, and they will have met it before, often as an accusation. Ask how they live with the question. 'I don't know, and here is what I do anyway' deserves more trust than a tidy explanation.
Have you prayed hard for something that did not happen?
Why ask it
Asking for an instance and not a theory gets you the real thing: a diagnosis, a job, a marriage. What they did with their faith afterwards is the answer. Never put this to someone who is still in the middle of it.
Do you believe in miracles, and have you seen anything you would call one?
Why ask it
The first half gets you what their tradition teaches and the second what they have lived, and the two do not always match. Personal answers tend to be small in scale: a recovery, a door that opened at the right hour. Take the story as told. Cross-examining it ends the conversation.
How do you see other religions: mistaken, partly right, or different roads to the same place?
Why ask it
Offering three options stops it sounding like a trap, and plenty of people will supply a fourth. A tradition's official line and a member's private view are frequently different, so it is fair to ask which one you are hearing.
How do you answer people who point to the harm done in religion's name?
Why ask it
Wars, scandals and plain hypocrisy are the objection many believers hear before any other. Some separate the faith from the institution and some refuse to, and both positions are worth hearing out. Raise it as a problem you are both looking at, since they may be angrier about it than you are.
What do you say to someone who thinks faith is only a comfort?
Why ask it
Many believers will agree that it comforts and deny that this is all it does, often adding that it asks more of them than it soothes. Put it as something you have heard said, so they are answering the idea and not defending themselves against you.
Can a person be good without faith?
Why ask it
Many people say yes without hesitating, and the interesting part comes next: what faith adds if goodness does not depend on it. If the answer is no, ask what they make of the decent non-believers they know.
Does what you believe about death change how you live now?
Why ask it
Put this way it skips the map of the afterlife, which people tend to recite secondhand, and asks whether the belief does any work. One person will say it removes the fear, another that they hardly think about it. Save it for another day if they have lost someone recently.
Doubt and hope
How is your faith different now from when you were younger?
Why ask it
It is easier to answer about one thing: something they were sure of then and aren't now, or the reverse. A single changed belief is simpler to talk about than 'growth', and it keeps the reply from becoming a rehearsed testimony. Some will say nothing central has moved, which is also worth hearing.
Do you have doubts, and do you count them as part of your faith or a threat to it?
Why ask it
Traditions differ on whether doubt is a failing, a stage or part of the discipline, so listen for which they were taught and whether they agree. Then ask what they do when it comes: pray through it, read, tell one trusted person, or wait it out. Any edge in your voice and you will get the official answer.
What part of your own tradition do you struggle with?
Why ask it
Plenty of believers quietly disagree with their own community about something: a rule, a teaching, how authority is used. Asking about theirs, and not about another faith's failings, makes it an invitation and not a challenge. Treat the answer as a confidence, since it may be something they have never said at home.
When has your faith been tested the hardest?
Why ask it
'Tested' is a believer's word more than an outsider's, and most have an answer ready: an illness, a betrayal, a long dry stretch. The follow-up that matters is what was different on the other side.
Have you ever walked away from your faith, or come close?
Why ask it
Leaving and returning is a common shape for a life of faith, and one that seldom gets asked about kindly. For those who did leave, the reason they came back is usually not the reason they first believed.
How can you tell when your faith is running low?
Why ask it
The signs are small at first: skipped prayers, a shorter temper, going along out of duty. Describing symptoms is easier than admitting the condition, and it opens the way to asking what they do about it.
What builds your faith back up when it has worn thin?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be modest and practical: one friend, a long walk, a return to a single habit, sometimes only waiting. Whatever you believe yourself, there is usually something here you can borrow.
What would you tell someone who is only beginning to explore faith?
Why ask it
Advice to a beginner shows what they think the first step is: read something, turn up somewhere, pray before you are sure anyone is listening, or simply wait. If you are that person, say so. The answer changes when it is meant for you.
What is giving you hope at the moment?
Why ask it
A short question that works even with people who dislike discussing religion. The present tense stops it turning into a summary of belief and keeps it about now.
What question about faith are you still living with?
Why ask it
It ends the conversation where their curiosity is and not where their certainty is. People sometimes name something they have not said aloud before, which makes it a natural place to stop.
How to use these questions
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you start
Say what you are and are not doing
One sentence is enough: you are curious, you are not looking to argue, and they can skip anything. People who have been on the receiving end of ambush conversations relax noticeably when this is stated.
Choose a handful
The list is long so that you can pick from it. Five or six questions drawn from two or three of the groups make a full conversation. Working through a whole group in order turns a talk into an interview.
Ask about practice before belief
What someone does on a normal week is easier to describe than what they hold to be true, and it is less exposing. The beliefs tend to come out on their own once the practices are on the table.
Use their words
If they say prayer, do not translate it into meditation. If they say the community, do not call it a church. Adopting someone's vocabulary is the clearest signal that you are listening rather than sorting them into a category.
Let silence sit
Several of these questions take a moment to answer honestly. Filling the pause with a follow-up usually gets you the easier answer instead of the true one.
If it is an interview about religion
For a class assignment or a profile, say at the start who will read it, and ask before you record or quote. Alongside the personal questions, take the ones in Starting points, Practice and Community that ask for the outline of the tradition: how it began, its branches, who leads the community, what marks a birth or a wedding. Finish by asking what you missed and whether anything they said should stay out of the write-up.
What tends to go wrong
Asking someone to speak for a billion people
Questions that begin why do Muslims or why do Catholics put a person in the position of spokesman. Ask what they do and what they were taught, and let them generalize if they want to.
Testing rather than asking
Questions built around a contradiction you have already noticed are recognizable immediately. If you genuinely want to understand how they hold two things together, say that plainly instead.
Asking the hard questions as charges
Science, suffering and the harm done by religious institutions are what believers get asked about most, usually by someone hoping to win. The wording in the Hard questions group asks how the person lives with the problem. Keep that wording, ask one at a time, and take the answer without a counter-argument.
Choosing the wrong moment
Someone in the middle of a bereavement, an illness or a family row is not looking for a conversation about belief, even a sympathetic one. Wait for a calm afternoon or a long drive, and keep the questions about grief and unanswered prayer for losses that are well behind them.
Treating agreement as the goal
You can finish the conversation understanding someone well and still think they are wrong. Aiming at consensus tends to produce a polite exchange in which neither person says much.
A gentle order to follow
Four steps
- 1Begin with Starting points and Practice: what the word means to them, an ordinary day, the shape of their year. Almost anyone can answer these comfortably.
- 2Move to the people: who taught them, how they found their community, what they would miss if they left.
- 3Then the harder ground, one or two questions at most: something from Hard questions, the part of the tradition they struggle with, what helped when they grieved.
- 4Close on hope and the question they are still living with, so the conversation ends open rather than settled.
If you are the one being asked
Use the list to prepare
These are also the questions people get asked about their own faith, by a new friend, a class, a curious colleague or a skeptical relative. Read the Starting points and Hard questions groups and try each answer aloud in plain words, without the vocabulary only your own community uses.
You do not owe a finished answer
Saying that you are still working something out is an honest reply and usually a welcome one. You can also decline a question, or ask what prompted it, before deciding how much to say.