From Mr Richard Barnes
Sir, — The Revd Gillean Craig (Review of 2011, television) does the BBC a slight disservice in omitting two notable live broadcasts.
With Pentecost Live from Halifax Minster, the Songs of Praise team allowed us to join a normal parish eucharist, celebrated with excellence and appreciated by many.
But the most poignant was BBC News’s uninterrupted transmission of the Sunday-morning service from the Lutheran Cathedral in Oslo as the people of Norway gathered with dignity and sorrow, inside and out, to remember and grieve for their young people so hatefully killed two days before.
The unobtrusive translation of the liturgy and prayers, retaining the imagery of the Norwegian words that we were hearing, was most moving.
RICHARD BARNES
7 Dinham Crescent, Exeter EX4 4EF
From Mr Ian Fordyce
Sir, — David Attenborough’s majestic Frozen Planet did indeed end with the suggestion that humankind faced extinction within 100 years, owing to global-warming effects on the poles.
The Revd Gillean Craig’s TV review (16 December) suggests that this was rather too soon for us to hope for a Second Coming before then. On the other hand, what would be the point of a Second Coming after we are all dead?
No. I believe we should, as a Church, take the comparatively positive line that the parousia will happen before we manage to extinguish ourselves. Otherwise, what price our loving God and Christ Jesus’s efforts to redeem us? Aren’t we churchmen supposed to be the first to spot a pattern here, and proclaim loudly that God is real, God does care, and God will intervene?
What if it is only 50 years?
IAN FORDYCE
90 Lent Green Lane
Burnham, Bucks SL1 7AW