Letter: Christian values

No doubt George Kerevan is right to ask for a return to "civic values" (Perspective, 11 March), but the idea that such values are common to small nations, and by implication absent in large nations, is torpedoed by his own reference to the way Ireland and Iceland so easily forsook them.

Darien disasters can tempt people in any size of nation, and small nations are especially vulnerable to them. I say this not because I think Scottish independence would be a mistake, but because something more profound than "civic values" is needed to ground any hopeful and sustainable future.

If you ask, historically, where did Scotland's values of thrift, hard work, education, civic duty and suchlike come from, the answer has to be Christian faith.

Capitalism may have been, dubiously, linked with "the Protestant ethic", but socialism has a much clearer Christian pedigree among Keir Hardie and the early trade unionists. Remember that Calvin was a humanist in days when such a term was not used in contrast to belief.

Today Christian belief is wrongly regarded as a private pursuit for those who like that kind of thing. But it is precisely "that kind of thing" which provides a bedrock and a motivating power for the values for which Kerevan longs.

Jock Stein

Dunbar Road

Haddington, East Lothian