Letters | 19 April 2018

Sit the snowflakes down

Sir: I was surprised to read Theo Hobson’s article about ‘snowflake’ Christians in the C of E (‘Holy snowflakes’, 14 April). What most struck me was the timidity of the clergy, who instead of explaining Christian teaching to their gay and other ‘snowflake’ parishioners, merely kowtowed to them by removing a collage depicting an exorcism. Clergy need to teach those who are easily offended that nowhere in the Christian Gospels — as my many readings tell me — does Jesus condemn gays. (That condemnation belongs to the Old Testament, where God commissioned Abraham and the Patriarchs to breed abundantly and build a nation. But as gay relationships do not produce children, they were forbidden as a waste of ‘seed’, along with the ‘sodomite’ practices associated with pagan temple prostitution.)

Jesus Christ’s central message in the New Testament, conversely, is one of grace, love and forgiveness for all, without regard to gender or sexual orientation.

And ‘sin’ has to do with murder, cruelty, greed, robbery, self-indulgence, and oppression of the poor, among other things — only with sex if it exploits others rather than being an expression of love. So please, ladies and gentlemen of the cloth, educate and explain things to your ‘snowflakes’ — and don’t just cave in to them.
Dr Allan Chapman

Oxford

Good news is no news

Sir: Lionel Shriver is right that optimism appears pallid, catastrophism invigorating (‘Catastrophising is my idea of a good time’, 14 April). As John Stuart Mill said, it is not the person who hopes when others despair but the person who despairs when others hope who is regarded as a sage. In the eight years since I published a book arguing that the world was on the whole getting better all the time, I have been asked every year by those hosting talks, how come I still believe in my thesis in the light of, for example, Afghanistan, the euro crisis, Libya, ebola, Crimea, migration, Syria, plastic, Trump, or whatever is the crise du jour.