No Surprise

It came as no surprise that a letter I sent to my local paper wasn't published. I suspect they thought it was controversial and didn't want to rock the boat with their christian readership. I certainly didn't pull any punches with it because I wanted to be as direct as possible, so here's the letter below.

'Editor

I write this email in regard to last week’s Newark Advertiser dated 30^th June which had an article on page 32 called ‘Credo’ written by Pastor Carl Meachem of the Newark Evangelical Church.

The article states the church ‘plays a vital role’ but very speedily launches into religious rhetoric and quotations from a book that is ambiguous in factual content at best. I fail to see how any article littered with biblical quotes and comparisons for example ‘the church is the body of Christ’ really conveys to a reader of a ‘news’ paper. Personally in a secular society I do not think we need to see this kind of article within a local publication, should anyone want to read or hear religious ramblings then they can of course go to church.

Mr Meachem closes with the point of ‘around the world we hear of Christianity’s rapid growth’. All I can say to this is that here in Europe it is in fact on the decline as people adopt a more sensible, pragmatic and humanistic way of life. I would also like to mention that people don’t want to hear Mr Meachem’s religious rants in public, I refer to his occasional appearances on the corner of Bridge Street/Market place in which we are force fed words written by ignorant old men long ago. Modern society needs optimism and common sense and not someone wailing to us as we shop that we are ‘doomed sinners’ etc. '

Yours .......

Again in this weeks edition we have more christian fervour and rhetoric, christ is coming back etc, this time by a baptist minister. We have so many different types of believers locally all trying to sell their own take on the bible but none in my view are more odious than the local Jehovah's Witnesses or the fanatical Evangelicals. These are the sort I am vehemently against as they are committed to bringing biblical bullshit to the streets and doorsteps and if they had their way we would all be thrall's to their misguided beliefs.

In closing if you are reading this Pastor Carl Meachem I'd just like to point out to you that its been in the news this week that christian bookshops around the UK are closing rapidly which totally contradicts your claim that christianity is booming once more - religion is hopefully in permanent recession.