Mistimed breakaway

It is tempting to heighten differences rather than similarities when an “Anglican minister is to take charge of Free Church congregation” (your report, 2 April).

But to distinguish the Church of England as the “state church, founded at the end of the 6th century” from the Free Church as a “breakaway denomination from the state church in Scotland”, founded in 1843, is to give the former about 1,000 years’ false antiquity. The Church of England was itself a “breakaway denomination” from the Catholic Church, and dates from the Act of Supremacy in 1534 under Henry VIII.

Rev Alison Peden

Leny Feus, Callander