Our Christian foundations Sir: 'I don't want to li
Our Christian foundations Sir: 'I don't want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery; I want to live in a society where I get stoned, and then commit adultery.' So, epigrammatically, the Spectator/Intelligence2 debate about culture declares its conclusions (Lloyd Evans, 13 October). The motion was, 'We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values.'
But what are these values? Low-brow hedonism, sex and shopping; abortion on demand, in fact as a means of contraception; a lewd and trivial entertainments industry and vile popular culture.
What we are seeing is not a society that offers a morally serious challenge to militant Islam, but one which has lost its nerve because it has given up its Christian faith. For a thousand years Christianity taught us how to think and how to feel and how to behave. Chivalry, self-restraint, service to others, examination of one's conscience — these all have their origin in Christianity. The mistake made by the secularised sophists is to think that civilised society will somehow remain even as we abandon Christianity. It won't.
The Revd Dr Peter Mullen Rector of St Michael's Cornhill, London EC3
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