Perhaps surprisingly for someone from Northern Ireland (though, for that very reason, maybe not so surprising at all) religion is not something I normally devote much of my time to.
In fact, if truth were known, I tend to avoid it like the plague.
As a subject for discussion, it's a definite non-starter: unless, that is, you want to attract the attention of every zealot, bigot and born-again bore within a radius of at least 200 yards.
While religion has certainly had many strange and varied bedfellows down through the years, unfortunately where I live, rational debate or tolerance has never been amongst them. A nodding acquaintance is probably as close as they have ever come to slipping between the sheets together.
But my avoidance isn't solely or even primarily to do with the fact that religion, of whatever brand, can often bring out the worst in people. Nor is it limited to only steering clear of discussions on the subject.
No, the problem for me runs much deeper than that.
The fact is (as a member of the Church of Ireland) that from an early age my own level of tolerance was stretched to the very limit by the sheer and utter mind-numbing boredom associated with the act of worship itself.
The only crumbs of comfort to be found, a very small crumb indeed, were the solemn assurances from my multi-denominational pool of friends that for them things were no better.
I have never had any difficulty with the basic Christian message of love, tolerance, forgiveness and concern for those worse off than myself. How could anyone?
It's just that, for the life of me, I could never figure out how it all related in any way to the torture I had to endure on a weekly basis.
Of course, this wasn't helped by my labouring under the mistaken belief that practising your religion should be an enjoyment, not an endurance test.
From childhood until my early teens, I dreaded Sundays with a passion.
The two sessions of Sunday school (morning and afternoon) were bad enough, but as nothing compared to the seemingly interminable church service sandwiched in between.
A cheerless and robotic recital of psalms and prayers and the passionless rendition of hymns were interrupted only long enough for the minister to deliver his sermon - and what an uplifting experience that usually proved to be.
I suppose there must be a certain kind of ingenuity involved in finding a different form of words to deliver the same 15-minute threat of eternal damnation to the same audience week after week. But if there is, I'm afraid I wasn't in a fit state to appreciate it.
By the time the sermon had ground mercifully to an end, I was beyond feeling anything - except perhaps a deep sense of pity for the minister's family. I, after all, had only to put up with this guy for an hour and a half once a week; they had to live with him.
Consequently, as soon as I was old enough to make the decision for myself I, like many others I suspect, chose to opt out of attending church.
Nowadays, my presence at places of worship is almost exclusively confined to weddings and funerals. But even that limited exposure has shown me that little has changed.
Marriage services are galloped through - or the recently deceased barely nodded at - as the vicar rushes to get down to, as he sees it, the real business of the day.
If anything, the larger than usual captive audience that comes with a wedding or funeral seems to add even more venom - and time devoted - to the haranguing of all and sundry about the mortal perils associated with anything remotely akin to enjoying oneself.
After a marriage ceremony you are meant to be looking forward to the reception, not to getting home to lie down for an hour in a darkened room.
All of the main Christian churches here have immediate and historical issues they need to address - paedophile priests, sadistic nuns and rampant sectarianism being just some of them. But even if they can manage the minor miracles those will require, it would be very foolish indeed to believe that all will then be rosy in the garden once again.
The origins of the current lack of any rosiness in the garden predate any contemporary problems the churches are faced with. Those merely provided, if not the excuse, then the opportunity and impetus for parishioners to walk away in their droves from institutions they have long regarded as self-serving and anachronistic (not to mention, totally and deliberately divorced from their everyday lives).
Upbringing and force of habit were all that had kept them there for so long - a lot less would have broken such delicate threads.
People have fallen out of love, not with Christianity itself, but with the oppressive, dismal and increasingly irrelevant institutions within whose care it was so sorely neglected.
Until the churches address that issue, they shouldn't bother ordering any new hymn books.