Faith vacuum

Robert Canning (Letters 31 May) takes me to task over the issue of an increasingly secular, formerly Christian society dealing with a militant religion.

Politicians seek to deal with the Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – by putting them into a box labelled “religion”.

Atheists suggest that “religious belief” is an imaginative projection of the human mind.

These strategies ignore the living dynamics of faiths which are powerful and elemental and have increasing numbers throughout the world.

Neither politicians nor atheists understand the scope and consequences of the Abrahamic faiths.

Muslims pray every day for our conversion to Islam and hold their beliefs morally superiority to western popular culture and indeed Christianity.

I am not so naive as to think that Britons will suddenly return to Church membership in large numbers nor do I wish to frighten people into doing so. I simply point out the consequence of pro-active political departure from Christianity.

It leaves a vacuum, filled temporarily and unsuccessfully in the Communist era by political despotism. This vacuum may in future be occupied in Britain by Islam’s missionary imperative.

(Rev Dr) Robert 
Anderson

Blackburn & Seafield Church

Blackburn, West Lothian