Sir, The political parties and the Christian Churches (letters, January 5) face the same dilemma. If you do not follow public opinion and current trends, you become irrelevant and out-of-date. But if you do, you lack conviction and vacillate. The Conservative Party is regularly accused of the former, the Church of England of the latter.

The answer is to present firm beliefs in a contemporary form.

For the Churches, it is not simply a question of being either modern or traditional. The congregations that are growing are those which present the old faith in a modern way. The least successful are those which combine radical theology with a traditional liturgy.

Yours faithfully,
JOHN BURROWS,
55 Berners Street, Ipswich IP1 3LD.
January 8.

From Mr J. A. Russell

Sir, While we are clearly no longer a church-attending society, I believe we are still a Christian country.

The morality of Jesus Christ, the greatest religious philosopher who ever lived, is very much alive in our society: witness our national response to the tsunami disaster. Furthermore, the rapid decline of the Church has not been matched by mass degradation or depravity.

When will the Church realise that the old dogma has got be expunged? Few people believe any more in a transcendental God. He has got to be brought down to earth and made a human God, resident in every human being. Few believe in Heaven or Hell, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth or everlasting Souls. We do not need a bishop to tell us what is right and wrong any more; we are quite capable of making moral decisions ourselves.

Andrew de Berry (letter, January 5) describes “a national Church preoccupied with notions of orthodoxy but desperately out of touch”. It needn’t be so. The Church needs new ideals that the broad mass of people can empathise with.

Yours faithfully,
J. A. RUSSELL,
45 Bellamy Road,
Cheshunt, Hertfordshire EN8 9JU.
January 6.

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