VIEW INSULTING TO RELIGIOUS PEOPLE

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

View insulting to religious people

Yet again, Allan Hayes gives us a dose of secularist propaganda dressed up to look innocent and moderate (Mailbox, February 13).Yes, of course we must all work together, but that will never be achieved without the blessing of God, who is all truth.

To suggest that people holding a particular religious view cannot work with others because of the school they attend is an insult to the very great majority of them.

The idea of the Government to foster the foundation of schools with a religious ethos is a very good one. It is well accepted by many that such schools tend to be better with regard to both the quality of learning and the discipline, and this is why, for example, so many non-Catholic parents try to find a place for their children in a Catholic school, rather than at the Joe Bloggs comprehensive. (There are, of course, notable exceptions on both sides).

Parents have an absolute right to have their children educated in a religious ethos if they so wish, and most will want their children to learn about their own faith before starting looking at other faiths.Most (not all) local education authorities are "dead hands", so taking the provision of assistance to schools from them is no bad thing.

In the end, though, the agenda of Mr Hayes, as always, is to undermine religion, particularly the Christian religion, from which most western culture comes.

It was interesting to hear Baroness Varsi, a prominent Muslim, state that she could see a concerted effort from militant humanism and secularism to push religion out of public life.

Mark W Jacques, OP, Quorn