Stable families

Mr Campbell’s provocatively misinterprets Jesus’s promise of reward to those who temporarily left family to follow him in his travels as an incitement to abandon family permanently. Responsible and balanced Biblical scholars do not, recognising the Bible’s clear teaching on family stability and commitment.

Rejecting belief in divine revelation, George Byron (Letters, 23 April) believes that biblical teaching reflects “the ideas of that time”, so it should be subject to review by contemporary society. That’s a discussion I’m always eager to engage in because Christian moral teaching makes sense and is supported by a mountain of statistical data. It is usually the progressive secular liberals who cling to their dogma in the teeth of the counter-evidence.

Richard Lucas

Broomyknowe

Colinton

Edinburgh

THERE are many of us who could be classed as believers without belonging to a particular church who would have no quibble with George Byron’s assertion (Letters, 23 April) that Britain is now in a “post-Christian” era, especially when self-professed Christians make up all sorts of “doubtful practices” to borrow his accurate phrase.

Jesus, of course, famously said nothing about sexual orientation, for example, even though many of His followers seem excessively concerned about what He might have thought about it, and ignore many of the controversial values He has supposed to have recommended, such as those Steuart Campbell alludes to in his letter.

But I would take issue with Mr Campbell’s assertion that loving God and your neighbour as yourself is “not much on which to found a country”.

I’d have thought a country which recognised that there are spiritual values that are more important than short-term, profit-driven focus on the here and now, and aimed to act as a caring society rather than a collection of individuals out for themselves, would be quite a good place to live, regardless of the outcome of the referendum.

(Dr) Mary Brown

Dalvenie Road

Banchory, Aberdeenshire