The godforsaken

Neil Barber (Letters, 9 October) rightly highlights the various social programmes formerly run by the Christian churches including, we might assume, schools, hospitals, orphanages and homeless shelters.

Might it not be wonderful if the present-day secularists took a leaf out of the church’s book and sought to build 
society up rather than simply dismantling the “privilege” of the religious?

As the late Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: “I’ve spent a number of years in India and Africa where I found much righteous endeavour undertaken by Christians of all denominations; but I never, as it happens, came across an orphanage run by the Fabian society or a Humanist leper colony.”

(Dr) Euan Dodds

Edinburgh