From Donald Leighton
Sir, — I am sorry there have been no responses to R. H. Stansfield’s eloquent plea (Letters, 24 April) for the Church to celebrate Jesus’s parables as vigorously as Christmas and Easter, to the benefit of the public life of the nation.
Similarly, our Creeds wrestle with definitions of the nature of God, incarnation, and resurrection, yet remain totally silent on Jesus’s teachings and example of how to live, which was the purpose and point of it all.
I have every sympathy with those who find this obession with doctrinal definitions of what must always be ultimately beyond human grasp a serious obstacle to church attendance or membership.
To proclaim instead that love-in-action serving one another, which is the essence of God’s way, would not only be good for common well-being, it would be far more successful evangelism for drawing the uncertain into Christ’s fold and towards the Kingdom of Heaven he proclaimed.
Too often the Church gets in the path of what it is called to promote.
DONALD LEIGHTON
90 Sycamore Road
Maryport CA15 7AG