Christian ethos

On Good Friday you printed a well written article by Graham Spiers giving a balanced overview of Christianity and the Church in Scotland today.

How disappointing that the first result was a sneering reply from Steuart Campbell (Letters, 9 April) in which he refers to Graham Spiers as “ostensibly a sports journalist”.

Well, Mr Spiers is in fact a very much respected and highly regarded member of that profession. Whether Jesus is best described as a carpenter or as a builder is of virtually no importance, neither to Christians – who know perfectly well that the bibles they read have been translated umpteen times – nor to the thrust of the article.

Character judgments on Judas and Pilate are bound to be subjective and beside the point. What happened to Jesus is the point and is what the whole Easter Story is about.

The main point of the article from Graham Spiers is that the Christian churches have certainly lost a lot of ground in terms of footprints on the steps of the buildings but still retain nearly half a million such footprints, and are held in good regard by many more; and that the these Christian people do enormous amounts of “good works” quietly and privately, claiming no brownie points from society – which generally shows no great disposition to award them anyway.

Colin Stirling-Whyte

Hainburn Park

Edinburgh