Rosemary Goring tells us that religion should be '"relegated to the purely private and personal realm" ("A desire for secular balance to the state", The Herald, June 17).
For starters, the public playing of Christmas carols will be out and so I will have to return my trombone to the Salvation Army hall. Our church and community centre could survive, but only as a private members' club, rather like a sex cinema in the 1960s.
This would soon put a stop to the daily provision of free meals to the homeless, some of whom might not have spotted that their hot dinners were laced with "intolerance and judgmentalism".
At the inter-church level, our project to support families who are experiencing housing difficulties and financial hardship would have to end. This is, after all, a programme motivated by the "bronze age" injunction to love your neighbour, endorsed by the post-bronze age teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
And lastly, our very public street pastors must be cleared from the area. The nocturnal care of drunken youths could then be taken over by teams of enlightened secularists from the premier league of public thinking.
John Coutts,
138 Ladysneuk Road,
Stirling.
Rosemary Goring's article on secularism stimulated a very instructive set of letters (June 18) but secularists need to make it clear they are strong advocates of freedom of expression.
Secularism does not want to still the religious voice.
Secularism is strongly in favour of people being free to congregate on any lawful basis and express their views on any matter so long as this, too, is done on a lawful basis.
Some people like to do this on a religious basis and good luck to them.
The key objective of secularism is to ensure a level playing field in the public arena which guarantees that religious voices and institutions are not privileged in public institutions, such as in controlling or influencing publicly funded education or defining the laws of marriage which should, of course, ultimately be determined by our elected representatives.
Too often the opposition to religious privilege by secularists is mischievously interpreted by religious apologists as an attack on the very ideas and practice of religion.
But in a free society even religious denominations must expect to be the target of criticism.
Too often in the past negative views of some religious denominations have been suppressed since they have been considered improper, disrespectful or even hateful.
Religions institutions must expect and tolerate critical comments about them and the questionable privileges granted to some of them by both the UK and the Scottish parliaments.
Norman Bonney,
17 Palmerston Place,
Edinburgh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article