The Morrisons were a fairly secular household, Protestant only insomuch as they
were not Roman Catholic. Van could go to Sunday school at the Brethern Gospel
Hall in the street, or to the slightly more middle-class St. Donard's, which was
Church of Ireland. Then suddenly his mother became a Jehovah's Witness.
No one seems sure exactly how her conversion began or how long it lasted, but
what is certain is that she became an ardent member of the local Kingdom Hall
sometime during the 1950s. Some of the older members can still remember Van
attending morning services with her, but George Morrison never made an appearance.
Her sudden conversion must have had an effect on her son, because if she was sincere in her beliefs
she would have read the Bible to him regularly, and issued stern warnings about the
dangers of leading a life outside the Lord. It also compounded his feelings of being an
outsider: who else in Belfast had a father who played Jelly Roll Morton
records, and a mother who indulged in doorstep evangelism?
"I was just on the periphery", he says of his contact with the local Kingdom Hall. "My mother
went for a few years. We didn't go to church all the time, but it was a very churchy atmosphere
in the sense that that's the way it is in Northern Ireland".