Letters to the Editor
SHOULD CHURCHES BE SAVED?
SIR,—The strange setting of Trinity Church in Leeds is one to haunt the imagination, and Indeed it haunts my own, for I was born in that city, and the memory of the blackened building with its tall steeple huddled among the busy shops and surrounded by teeming crowds and rattling tramcars is an enduring one. I left Leeds when I was twenty and did not return for a further twenty years. As ever, the returning native was shocked by many things. Increased vulgarity and cheapened standards were everywhere apparent. But still in the heart of things stood the Church of Holy Trinity, solitary witness to God in the temple of Mammon. What great good fortune, it seemed, that this witness had been planted ,there I Thus, the more startling and distressing to learn now that this true asset of religion is to be uprooted and destroyed. The word 'asset' as used by the Arch- deacon of Leeds has, however, a sinister ring. A millionaire's pictures are among his assets. His money has given him the power tem- porarily to possess them. But not all his millions can purchase for him the right to destroy them. He must regard himself not as the owner of masterpieces but as their lessee. Similarly, no ecclesiastical authorities ought to regard themselves as the 'possessors' of the precious things they have inherited, but only as the responsible lessees. The Church of St. John the Evangelist must seem to the Archdeacon an even greater ' asset' than Holy Trinity since its site is a larger one, and it is alarming to think that the same arguments which are being used to pull down Trinity Church may lead eventually to the destruction of St. John's. It is true that the could have come into being nless inspired by a faith of surpassing force and splendour, a belief founded on a truth which cannot confidently be denied.
Before the Church Commissioners come, therefore, finally to decide the fate of Holy Trinity, it would surely be as well for them to consider the extension of the meaning of ' asset ' beyond its merely financial connota-
tion.—Yours faithfully, FL S. wimmetsoN
5. Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, W.4
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