A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 23rd January 1999.
The English have never been great churchgoers, but the vast majority of our people bear witness to their Christian inheritance in countless non-Sunday or non-church events – in court, on state occasions, in schools, at funerals.
The coronation of a new monarch is not just a religious event. It is an affirmation of the duty that British sovereigns owe their subjects. The Church of England is the national church of the English; it is also the implicit custodian of some of the most important aspects of our national identity.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 8th June 1995.
It was also chosen in bowdlerised form by David Twistan Davies (letters editor) when he published a collection of his favourite letters to the Daily Telegraph.
Following its thoughtful report on marriage, there are rumours of a forthcoming Church report on burglary which is said to be circulating.
This comments: “Some of the reasons for choosing burglary as a way of life were grounded on sober, harsh reality, such as unhappy experiences of working in a regular job.
The phrase ‘criminal’ is a most unhelpful way of characterising the lives of burglars. It has the effect of reducing burglary in all its complexity of intentions and forms to a single sensational category.”
A letter to the Reading Evening Post which was published on 20th June 1969.
One of the few predictable things in public affairs is that sooner or later a campaign will be started by a clique of Socialist MPs to lower the age of consent. Sure enough, David Kerr, MP, has come forward as the champion of sexual liberty among the under sixteens.
One would have thought that with the whole country awash in a flood of semi-pornographic literature in the form of magazines and cheap paperback novelettes, adolescents need all the protection they can get in order to grow up with a sense of values designed to avoid the chaos in their private lives which the present national obsession with sex, unabated, will undoubtedly bring.
Of course this argument will make no impression on those MPs who, with the tacit support of the Government have forced through a whole series of permissive Acts on capital punishment, abortion, theatre censorship, and now divorce.
Nor can one expect any form of real opposition from the Conservatives, who stand, mute and uncomprehending, in the face of determined attempts to undermine the order and sanity of our society.
Still less can one expect resistance from the Anglican Church who appear to have no definite opinion about anything.
In the present state of moral anarchy, the opinions of MPs on moral issues are as important to the future happiness of our country as are their views on economics and immigration. They should be made to realise that our country is not a plaything to be experimented upon in obedience to some wild social theory or prejudice.
It is to be hoped therefore that Dr Kerr’s constituents, especially those with daughters in their early teens, will be left in no doubt as to his views, in time for them to give a judgment at the next election.
