This paper responds to the question of how volunteers persist in volunteering. The geographies of voluntarism have explored patterns and motivations for volunteering, but a gap remains to understand how people persist in volunteering. This gap is crucial to address if voluntary sector projects are to be sustainable by retaining volunteers. This paper questions how volunteers persist in volunteering in a faithbased context through volunteers' narratives from a church food poverty project 'Lunch'. It contributes to two key agendas in the geographies of religion -faith as performed in people's daily lives and faith-based organisations -because volunteering was a way for Lunch volunteers to act out their faith. To understand Lunch volunteers' persistence, this paper utilises affect theory to draw out from their faith-based narratives how volunteers are affected by their experiences; how volunteering could mean more to volunteers than what was represented; and how fleeting moments could be as significant as ongoing experiences. Overall, bringing the geographies of religion and voluntarism together, this paper argues that persistence in volunteering is a continual process of motivation, action and reflection in which factors from the past, present and anticipated future feed into volunteers' motivations to persist in volunteering or not.

Poverty in the UK continues to rise, making it more important than ever to understand lived experiences of poverty. This paper responds to a gap in understanding collective experiences of poverty by analysing the affective atmospheres at three foodbanks in two British cities in 2014 and 2019. Drawing on ethnographies at the three foodbanks, it approaches affective atmospheres through Spinoza and a focus on capacity: the capacity of clients to be in a situation different to that of their current experience of food poverty; and the capacity of foodbank volunteers and managers in terms of how they desired the foodbank to be run. Overall, the paper argues that affective atmospheres at the foodbanks were formed by an ever-changing relation between these capacities through the past, present, and anticipated future, and the ongoing context of austerity.

In this paper I respond to the question of whether voluntary sector responses to food poverty in the UK are a sticking plaster without addressing the causes of food poverty. I do so by drawing on a case study of a holiday hunger project and I reflect on three principles: being relational, encouraging participation and working for justice. I conclude with three recommendations for how voluntary sector organisations can work towards both short- and longer-term responses to food poverty.

The voluntary sector is playing an increasing role in responding to UK poverty, but there is a lack of attention in cultural geographies to understanding what motivates people to volunteer in this response. In particular, faith-based organisations – and therefore volunteers with religious faith – have been an active part of the voluntary sector response to poverty. However, little is known about what motivates people who have a religious faith to volunteer. Drawing on participatory and ethnographic research with a UK Christian charity working in the area of children’s holiday hunger, this article seeks to make three contributions. First, it moves beyond static notions of religious motivation which tend to characterise quantitative and more reductive qualitative approaches to volunteering in the social sciences. Secondly, it develops analysis of religious faith which foregrounds its relational, fluid and contested role in motivating people to volunteer, highlighting the importance of ongoing volunteering journeys alongside the initial motivations which led to a person starting to volunteer. Thirdly, by focusing on effort and enthusiasm the article seeks to break down the binary between faith-based and secular motivations and highlight instead the ways volunteers at the holiday hunger project experienced challenges in turning an initial motivation into action, and how ‘faith motivation’ itself is inherently relational and is co-constituted in place.

This paper advances the geographies of religion, spirituality and faith's limited attention to positionality by discussing the critical issues raised when using participatory approaches. Reflecting on three cases of participatory research, we foreground the dynamics of being a researcher with faith when working with participants from faith communities. Advocating participatory approaches as valuable methodologies that should be used more extensively to explore beliefs, faith practices, and social justice, we argue that greater attention needs to be given to the positionality of researchers undertaking this sort of research. Our cases raise three themes for discussion. First, the variety of ways in which faith positionalities influence how research is developed, conducted and concluded. Second, the intersections between our faith and other positionalities and how they shape our roles and relationships with research participants. Third, the fluid and multifaceted nature of faith positionalities and how they are changed, emphasized, and softened through the dynamics and entanglements of fieldwork. In doing so, we reflect on the complexities of being a researcher with faith, argue that faith positionality is a helpful dimension of their research rather than a limitation, and that all cultural, social and historical geographical researchers should reflect on their faith positionality.

The ‘Age of Austerity’ has ruptured the social fabric of contemporary Britain. Arising from our three-year Life on the Breadline project, this article represents the first fieldwork-led analysis of the multidimensional nature of austerity-age poverty by academic theologians in the UK. The article analyses the impact that austerity has had on Christian responses to poverty and inequality in the UK. We draw on our six ethnographic case studies and interview responses from over 120 national and regional Church leaders to exemplify the four approaches to the Christian engagement with poverty that we identified during our research: ‘caring’, ‘campaigning and advocacy’, ‘enterprise’ and ‘community building’. We argue that the Church needs to grasp the systemic, multidimensional and violent nature of poverty in order to realise the potential embedded in its extensive social capital and fulfil its goal of ‘transforming structural injustice’. The paper shows that the Church remains nervous of moving beyond welfare-based responses to poverty and suggests that none of the existing approaches can force poverty into retreat until the Church re-imagines itself as a liberative movement that embodies God’s preferential option for the poor in every aspect of its life and practice.

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