Emily Graves spoke with author Peter Lupson about 12 Premier League football clubs that owe their existence to a church

I'll give you one example of this. There was a man called Peregrine Propert who was a curate at St Andrew's Church in the Fulham area and he set up a mission called St Augustine's nearby. Not far from that mission there was a group of youngsters who were cleaning the horse-drawn carriages of the gentry. They were looked down upon as being dirty, smelly, foul-language and all of these things and nobody would have anything to do with them. Propert invited them to come into the church where he set up a gym for them and he befriended these boys. They were not much younger than him so it was quite a fairly natural age gap. He was reported to the bishop for not mixing with respectable people and he actually said, "I believe I convinced the good bishop that the respectable people are not fully aware of the gospel message" and he quotes the words of Jesus, "I've come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance". In other words, Jesus befriends those people who most need help in changing their lives, from what they are at the moment and they're not happy to be, to something that he can make them into. This man was very much one who showed unconditional love to these boys and as a result many became Christians.

Emily: Is it still widely acknowledged in the world of football today that God was actually at the centre of people's actions?

Peter: It's not widely known and it wasn't really widely known until I wrote my book Thank God for Football! - but what's been amazing, Emily, has been the response to it. I was amazed that, as a result of reading about what their founders were like, what sort of people they were, seven clubs have restored their founders' graves when I found them in a derelict condition; two clubs have inducted their clergymen founders into their halls of fame and another two clubs have placed plaques on the churches where they were founded. There is a terrific sense of debt to these humble founders.

Emily: Are the original values in which clubs were set up still there, or is there more of a focus nowadays on things like money?

Peter: It's true to say that the fact that there are huge sums of money at stake has driven football from a game that was originally played, as the founder of Fulham said, for recreation and good fellowship to trying to achieve huge financial rewards. The result is there's huge anxiety in the game: people are desperate for success, especially if they can get into Europe and they're desperate to avoid failure and relegation because that can spell disaster.

What was so heartening in my own relationship with the clubs is the fact that they look back on these early days as golden days, in the sense that they recognise that football was played in a different spirit for different motives.

On the DVD that we've made, based on Thank God for Football!, this is the TV programme that's going out worldwide, the chief executive of Swindon Town said that football has lost its way; it's lost its moral compass and we need to get back to the values of people like William Baker Pitt who was the founder of Swindon Town Football Club.

Emily: Do you think God still has a big part in the game today?

Peter: The clear answer to that is what happened in the case of Fabrice Muamba. If you recall, Fabrice Muamba collapsed in a cup match against Tottenham, (he's a Bolton player), and he went into cardiac arrest for some 78 minutes. That shook the whole world of football and for the first time ever that people can remember, faith and football and prayer made the front pages of national newspapers. What has had a big impact on the club has been the faith of Fabrice Muamba's family, their unswerving Christian faith in the face of such adversity. It had a huge effect on the club chairman and he has actually gone on record and come on to the DVD we've made, the TV documentary, and said that he was deeply moved by the power of prayer and the faith that he saw in Muamba's family. It's made a big impression on him and as a result he's now been looking into the Christian faith.

The answer is there is a lot of place for faith today and it's heartening to hear that something like two-thirds of all the clubs have their own chaplain.

Emily: Tell us a little bit about the DVD and how this is going out worldwide. How did that come about?

Peter: The story is very interesting because it goes back to the little football club I started at my own church and then I started a church league at the same time. Boys in the league were being ridiculed for only being in a church league. They were told it didn't count, you're all soft, bet you use Bibles for shin pads and so on and many of the boys left.

Emily: What a comment!

Peter: It's terrible, isn't it, but it did upset the boys. They took it to heart and many left the league or wouldn't join it. To cut a long story short I made the connection that one of our local clubs up on Merseyside where I live, Everton, was actually started as a Sunday-school team by St Domingo Methodist Chapel. Liverpool is an offshoot of Everton, so I told the boys, "Look, that's two major clubs that owe their debt to a church, you're simply following in their footsteps so don't you be embarrassed". That got me thinking, are there other clubs that are of similar origin? That's when I made the discovery there were 12 altogether and that led me to write the book Thank God for Football!