Alcohol and bad language aren’t really James Morton’s thing. The 21-year-old Bristol City midfielder is teetotal, doesn’t swear and always tells the truth, which means there is only one person to go to when a team-mate is trying to get to the bottom of a dressing-room prank.

“They know if I saw it, I wouldn’t lie,” Morton says, smiling. “I do chuckle at that sometimes.”

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Morton is a devout Christian, which marks him out as different in the sometimes insular world of football. Not as different as you might think, though. Through the work of Linvoy Primus, the former Portsmouth defender, and the Christians In Sport charity, Morton has come to realise that he is far from alone.

“There’s a whole group (of footballers) who meet every week on Zoom for basically a Bible study discussion, about a certain topic in the Bible and how it relates to football,” says Morton. “It started as 10 people and now there’s about 30. These are all people who are Christians in football, all around England at different clubs, different ages, and we come together as one and talk about things that we relate to.”

Understandably, the identity of the players involved is kept private unless, like Morton, anybody wishes to talk openly about their faith and their experiences. “There’s a lot more professional footballers than I ever thought,” says Morton, who has been talking to Christians In Sport for a couple of years. “There are people that you know, people that you’ve played against — it’s just great to relate to people in the world of football.”

It is easy to imagine how helpful that could be for somebody like Morton, who is just starting to find his way in the professional game.

He spent the first half of this season on loan at Forest Green Rovers and made 17 appearances for the League Two club before being recalled by City in January. That they gave him a four-year contract in September, despite the fact he has yet to make his debut for them, says everything about how highly he is regarded at the Championship club.

Morton’s passion for football shines through during our conversation — he is a fan of, as well as a player for, Bristol City — but it doesn’t define him. “Football is a massive part of my life but I put my identity as a Christian,” he says. “I was brought up in a Christian family and it wasn’t until five or six years ago that I wanted to take that on myself. I wanted to do that because I realised who God was, who He is, and that gives me a lot of purpose and an identity that I think if I relied on football, I wouldn’t get so much.

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“Football is a good career and it can last for 15 years. But me as a Christian lasts for life and eternity. It made me realise that I could have a peace in me and a love from God. A lot of it was having no fear in God and what He was, and that’s what my life is all about. I try my best and I love to live my life for God.”

That Morton is so open to speaking publicly about his faith at such a young age is a sign of his maturity and just how comfortable he is in his own skin when it comes to his beliefs and the way he lives his life. It is also, perhaps, a measure of how much attitudes have shifted in relation to football and Christianity, bearing in mind some of the stories that players tell from years ago.

During our video call, I read Morton an extract from an interview Alan Comfort did with The Guardian in 2003. Comfort, who became a Christian at the age of 20, played for Cambridge United, Leyton Orient and Middlesbrough in the 1980s. He is now Orient’s club chaplain.

In that article, Comfort talks about how Graham Daniels, whom he played alongside at Cambridge and is now the general director of Christians In Sport, was mocked by the other players for his faith. Comfort says when he joined Cambridge he was told to “watch out” for Daniels because “he’s a bit different”. That Comfort was bought to replace Daniels in the side prompted further ridicule from team-mates. “They asked him how he could believe God existed if he was about to get sacked.”

As it happens, Comfort had nothing but respect for Daniels and would become a Christian through him. Comfort explains in that same interview that he stopped swearing straightaway, got a bit of stick from his team-mates for “being a bit strange”, and was expected to referee every five-a-side match at training because the other players knew that he wouldn’t cheat.

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Morton smiles at that last line. “I would like to be reliable and to be there for all my team-mates — to be like a ref, like that man said. I can relate to that. It’s funny to hear it.

“I don’t swear myself. At Forest Green, I remember someone said sorry after swearing in front of me because they knew I was a Christian. I’ve had that through my age groups as well. So I’ve had lots of respect. I like to use other words instead of swearing. I like to let my frustration go through prayer.”

It feels encouraging to hear Morton hasn’t had to endure anything like what Daniels or Comfort went through during their careers. “I haven’t had one bad experience at all with being a Christian,” he says.

That is not to say that he doesn’t stand out. When Forest Green hopped on a plane to Dublin for their Christmas party six months ago, Morton went along. “It opened my eyes. It was good fun and I enjoyed it,” he says.

Morton stops there, but there’s more to the tale.

While his team-mates were out and about on the town, Morton was on a treadmill working up a sweat. He laughs. “It was two nights that we were there, and the second night not everyone went out — it was an optional thing. I don’t drink and because I don’t get involved in that, I went off and found a gym myself to do a bit of extra running.”

After looking back at Alan Comfort’s career and hearing about some of the challenges he faced, I tracked him down. I wanted to ask what he thinks of the journey James Morton is embarking on now, about 35 years after he was doing the same thing, and whether he believes football is more accommodating these days when it comes to Christianity.

“Trying to compare the two can be unfair. But I would say that things are easier now than they were back in my time, only because there were just so few people who would openly say they were a Christian,” Comfort says.

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“I’m trying to think of anyone who would have said outwardly that they were a Christian then. You go back to the time Glenn Hoddle said he was — and said a lot of other things as well that just threw everybody. It meant that he made things a lot worse for anybody who was a Christian at that time. With the faith healer stuff it moved to a different place, and he talked about reincarnation, and that made things worse because it’s certainly not what a Christian believes. It was quite harsh. I think he was just thinking out loud, as such, and getting a bit mixed up in his beliefs at that time.”

The Bible discussion group represents a huge change, on the face of it. Zoom obviously wasn’t around in the 1980s but presumably nothing like that group would have existed back in Comfort’s day? “No. It didn’t. And it’s brilliant. I just love hearing the very clear differences that there are,” he says. “But although it wasn’t there in the same way, it was there in another way. Graham and I used to sit on the steps of a church after training and we’d pray for the players.

“But it’s fantastic to think that there’s that group of people now, which is a hugely bigger group than when I played. I also think that there’s another group below that which would have a strong sense of faith as well. Football is allowing that now to develop. I think back in my day the football world was frightened of anything that was different and therefore it would try and break it out of you.”

Comfort paints a bleak picture of what it could be like for someone like him in the 1980s. He remembers one manager calling him into his office and putting him on the spot in a way that would surely be unimaginable now. “He said, ‘I’ve got a question for you. Who is more important to you, me or God?’ I thought about it and knew that I was in big trouble. I said God was more important. And I never trained or played for that club again. He said, ‘See the door? When you go out, don’t ever come back.’

“I thought that was a horrendous question that nobody should ever be asked. I don’t know what it looks like for James as he’s going forward, or anybody, but I hope that choosing between football and God doesn’t exist. Because you should be able to have both of those, you should be able to be absolutely committed to your football and have a very strong and equally important faith.”

In what feels like a societal change as much as anything, Comfort believes football managers are more broad-minded now. He also talks about the eclectic nature of English football nowadays and how much more expressive some of the overseas players and managers are when it comes to religion. For example, goalkeeper Alisson and his Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp speak openly about being Christians. “The football world is less afraid of things now,” Comfort adds.

When Comfort reflects on football’s relationship with Christianity from a playing perspective, he talks about the importance of conforming “in some way”. Off the pitch, he felt that he could be different. But on the pitch, his team-mates needed to know he was one of them and that they could depend on him. To illustrate his point, he mentions a Sunday fixture against Swindon Town when his Orient manager, Frank Clark, who was always understanding around Comfort’s commitments to the church, asked him whether he was happy to play.

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“I made the choice that I would play because I wanted the players in the team to know that it was a crucial match and I wasn’t bailing out. Back then there was pressure on me not to play from within the Christian world. But I looked at the message in the dressing room. So my conforming was that I was part of a team and I would do anything, within reason, for that team to do well.”

That sort of thinking strayed into other, off-the-pitch, areas too, as Comfort recalls when told about Morton going out with the Forest Green Rovers players in Dublin. “It’s lovely when people can see that you’re normal and I think James is referring to that,” he adds.

“I would go to nightclubs with the boys. When they were all drunk, I would get a taxi and go home. I wasn’t doing what they were doing but I was with them. I wasn’t thinking what they were doing was so bad that I would never associate with them; I thought they were brilliant, they were my friends. But there was a line that I would draw, and they knew that I had a line — they were always trying to get me over it, ‘Let’s have some fun with this!’

“But I thought that if I went into a football club and trained and went home and almost belittled what I did, as if they weren’t good enough for me… that wasn’t true; I wanted to be a footballer all my life, so the idea that I would despise other people who were footballers would be a nonsense, because they were people who I understood. I wanted to be a part of that world, but I suppose to be different within it.

“That’s the walk that James is having to do now. And I admire people who manage it because even though it might be more accommodating in the world, it’s still difficult to stand out for what you are.”

For Morton, the main focus is breaking through at Bristol City rather than worrying about being “different”, which doesn’t seem to enter his mind.

He was training with the first-team as soon as he returned from Forest Green, and travelled with the squad for the game away to Wigan Athletic on January 11, only to break a metatarsal a few days later. It happened after making a fairly robust sliding tackle, which is not really Morton’s style. He is a deep-lying midfielder who likes to spray the ball around with his left foot. Bristol City fans of a certain generation might read that description and think of Brian Tinnion, who made over 450 appearances for the club from 1993 to 2005 and then managed them. Tinnion is now their loans manager and has been a big influence on Morton.

“I love the title of being called a quarterback, I love getting on the ball and being the one who starts attacks and playing through lines,” says Morton. “I know I should add goals to my game but passing means just as much to me — an assist, a good cross, or a diagonal ball, whatever it would be, that brings great joy to me. I would like to be an all-round midfielder, I’d like to add bits of the No 8 to my game. People would say that I’m more of a holding midfielder but I see myself as being able to do more than that.”

Although there is a quiet self-assurance about Morton now, he admits he was a “shy character” growing up, and that impacted on his football in a couple of ways. It partly influenced his decision to keep playing with his friends until he was 15 — “I didn’t really like the whole pressure of the group in academy football” — and meant that he didn’t always impose himself on games as a youth team player at Bristol City.

Some of those who watched Morton play regularly at that level could see his talent and technical ability but felt that the kind, courteous and humble young man who went to church every week was too nice to demand the ball from his team-mates at times. “I remember very clearly going through that phase,” says Morton, nodding. “I was a footballer but my personality was to be quiet and polite, and that did come out on the pitch. I’ve had to mature in my character, to use my voice more. Me shouting or helping someone in a good way, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Loan spells with local non-League sides Chippenham Town and in particular Bath City, where he spent the whole of last season, have provided another layer to his development. Forest Green in the EFL’s lowest tier was a step up again and led to Morton missing an important engagement at church — his league debut, at home against Oldham Athletic in August, clashed with his brother’s wedding. “I was best man as well. But thankfully he understood,” says Morton. “I went up in the evening. To make it like I was there, they took a picture of me and made a cardboard cut-out!”

Religion can be such a divisive issue in the world and not everybody will relate to Morton’s thoughts or his Christian beliefs. Listening to him talk so eloquently for well over an hour, though, it is clear that his faith is such a huge part of the person he has become. “It’s given me great wisdom and so much confidence, and it gives me purpose in everything that I do,” he says. “I wouldn’t be where I am with football today without it, that’s for sure.”

As we prepare to sign off, I say to Morton that there is one more story I need to run by him. His girlfriend, I’m reliably told, is the Bristol City club chaplain’s granddaughter and, according to Lee Johnson, the club’s manager, that represents his “biggest challenge” going forward. “I can’t have the big man thinking bad of me if I’m going to drop him!” Johnson says with a smile.

Morton breaks into laughter. “Yes, that wasn’t planned, I promise. I just happen to have gone to the same school as her. We’ve been going out for nearly five years now. It wasn’t until I got to where the under-23s were and where the first-team train that I realised her granddad was the chaplain, so I see him a couple of times a week at the training ground. It’s quite a funny one how it’s come together. But I can imagine it being an awkward one for the gaffer. I don’t mean to put pressure on him and I know that the chaplain doesn’t either!”

(Top photo: James Chance/Getty Images)