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It is like an annual pilgrimage for the tangled souls. Martyn Joseph comes to town and does Church for the liberal backsliders. In most cases these people are not particularly liberal and are certainly not backsliders, but Joseph's rousing version of his song of that name brings communal singing of a faith community. It is very relative, but these faith rooted questioners sometimes fit uneasily into Christian communities who shun doubt as weakness and passion for injustice as a social gospel with little place in a belief system fixed only on the saving of souls. Bizarrely by not concentrating on an evangelistic specific, Joseph does just that--he saves souls and there are many, many souls who leave this and his other gigs with their souls radiant in spiritual smile.

The holistic vigor of Joseph's faith is sadly somewhat unique. Songs about love are not absent but less frequent than most set-lists. "This Being Woman" steals back the aging woman's dignity from Hollywood, the glossy magazine cover and more specifically in this case a vulgar comedian. His beautiful Cardiff Bay about a Sunday afternoon walk with his boy sits alongside the unjust execution of another Welsh boy Dic Penderyn and two songs about Welsh miners his own "Please Sir" and Max Boyce's "Rhondda Grey."

He stands with the world's refugees as in "The Good In Me Is Dead," as sensitive and poignant an anti-war song as the songwriting genre has ever been given. He rages against economic injustice and unfair trade laws as in Bruce Cockburn's "Call It Democracy," a song on his brand new covers album Run To Cover, written in the 80s and maybe even more on the pulse now than it ever was. Likewise Larry Norman's American Novel, about the Vietnam war and the original race to the moon, is rewritten to include Iraq and the race to Mars both of which come at the cost of making a more historical and pastoral investment in the HIV/AIDS children of southern Africa.

America is the constant focus of Joseph's critique as he tells us about recent trips around Ground Zero, Washington's War Memorial as well as a White House where all the lights were out and even a bookshop gig in Grand Rapids, Michigan where the proprietor revealed that the Patriot Act demands the government know who buys what books! Joseph almost breaks down as he speaks about the heartless decisions made by world leaders and Blair gets the same number of namechecks as Bush. He fully expects those given authority to use it compassionately. What we have now is "just not good enough!" he concludes. His own recent co-write, with his long time songwriting partner Stewart Henderson, "End Up Here," is so contemporary that one wonders will it be out of date by the time of the next album!

Throughout, Joseph is constantly apologising for the depressing nature of his work. I beg to differ. At the end of this gig the people around me in the Church Of the Liberal Backslider are renewed and revived. The best of songs are those that can express the pain of a broken world. The day after Bush's re-election, my friends and I shared the songs to play in order to ease the frustration and confusion. Sometimes there are songs that make you glad you are down and can therefore fully appreciate the point; like "Blood On The Tracks" after a heartbreak! Some of Joseph might be filed in this section but most are much more than a diary of the darkness. Martyn Joseph concerts are like a series of little flickering candles. The candles are like prayers of hope found in a floundering faith in a loving God that ever-well-flounders. "The Man Said," which takes the spirit of the Bono's and Pete Seeger's to keep us walking on flows into the clever spin on Christ's crucifixion; "Strangeway." "Treasure The Questions," the oldest song tonight uses questions not as a reason to surrender but to give purpose to the continuing journey and All This Time reminds us how long it takes to find wisdom and self.

After the aforementioned commentary of the world's ills, the candles light like a beacon before the benediction. Describing the state of the world as Easter's Friday, there is a pumping chant of resurrection on Sunday's Coming, more fuel to give courage to the flame. "Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home" is a perfect pre-encore ending with transcendent grace our only way through the precariousness of the twenty first century. The encore is another impassioned declaration of commitment to not only talk about the world's foibles but to get on out there after the gig and "Kiss The World Beautiful."

By this stage the Backsliders are inspired and energised. In the vestibule after the service there is a mutual sense of revitalised belief. That liberal backslider tag comes from people who are frightened to risk, to come out of their tiny windowless safe house and live life in all its fullness. Always being correct and perfectly defined is the obsession that becomes a distraction to a sad little existence of Pharisee-like conformity, missing most of the world and life that God has made and redeemed. The last few lines of "Kiss The World Beautiful" express the feelings of tonight's audience . . . "Sometimes it's just more important to love / Than to always have it right." Martyn Joseph expresses faith as it applies to every angle of life's experiences. This gig is the creed that I want to live by. I'm off to kiss the world. . . .