Shallow grasp of what is holding us back

This determinism is found in all cultures including native North American, African traditional and in the Indian caste system.

Closed world views were opened up by Christianity, which has been a liberating dynamic throughout its near 2,000 years. This can be seen continuing in China today.

Scotland has been disproportionately innovative and influential for the past 400 years due to Reformation Christianity. Scottish missionaries, educators, doctors, engineers and administrators are still admired worldwide. Nobel Laureate Sir James Black had a devout Christian background.

Judaism raised up many distinguished thinkers from its particular ethical base, that was inherited and valued in Scotland since the Reformation. Christianity inspired discipline and application required for innovation.

Christianity has not penetrated deeply into the collective consciousness of Scotland, which will continue to sink in morale as it abandons it.

REV DR ROBERT ANDERSON

Blackburn & Seafield Church

MacDonald Gardens

Blackburn

Peter Jones asks "how can we encourage more non-conformist ... thinking in Scotland today?" (Opinion, 7 April).

Perhaps the practice of bringing thousands of schoolchildren to sit through First Minister's Question Time at Holyrood might be looked at anew.

It is perhaps the only direct exposure to real live politics many impressionable youngsters will really have and it is often more rancorous and tribal than the equivalent contest at Westminster.

I've always felt uncomfortable knowing that there are children gazing down on this mudbath, and who could be forgiven for assuming such tribal warfare is mainly what politics is all about?

If the visits persist, then perhaps some teachers might afterwards treat the whole thing as a history lesson, pointing out that, regrettably, the old Scotland system, based on arid factional conflicts, is just taking longer than expected to disappear into history and that what goes on in the national Parliament must not become an inspiration for personal behaviour.

TOM GALLAGHER

Department of Peace Studies

University of Bradford

Peter Jones (Opinion, 7 April) suggested the Kirk may be responsible for inhibiting innovative thinking. The Renaissance brought about the transition from the medieval to the modern world which precipitated the Reformation.

John Knox, a man of the prevailing culture of the times, was still progressive with an enlightened vision of "a school in every parish." The Church of Scotland was subsequently in the vanguard of intellectual ferment and founded our great historic universities. The Kirk is a broad church with a structure of courts that tends towards democracy, which guards against clerical domination and is capable of innovative thinking. It was at the zenith of Presbyterianism that the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and industrial revolution took place, along with radical changes in the intellectual and cultural climate. There is development and diversity in the Kirk which is hardly a barrier to innovation.

Innovative and imaginative thinking is to be welcomed, but in some respects not so welcome is the mobility of society, the pervasiveness of the mass media, and as a recent BBC television programme suggested, that Christianity in this country was being increasingly opposed and marginalised. Added to that there is the atheistic hostility of people such as Richard Dawkins, who have every right to state their point of view but without invective.

It may be worth stating that the Kirk, next to the government, is the largest agency in Scotland, caring for the afflicted and addicted. Surely embracing the sick, infirm and derelict, is indicative of innovative thinking and action.

REV J HARRISON HUDSON

Hamilton Avenue

Fife