Lady Warsi's polemic goes too far (Warsi delights Vatican with speech on politics and faith, 15 February). By all means fight "intolerant secularism", but to suggest that faith should influence political decisions has immense dangers.
Religious beliefs do not ultimately rest on the backing of reason and logic, and cannot command the willing consent of the wider public. The inevitable consequence is a recourse to repression and force. Consent is essential to the survival of democracy and can only be sustained within a civil society based on rational debate and democratic decision-making.
Paradoxically, it is also in the interest of religion that the state itself should be secular: beliefs enforced by law will not be rooted in hearts and minds. Only the state, and the laws it enforces, can be the means by which all individuals can be guaranteed their varying personal beliefs and the right to express them.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• Before Lady Warsi gets further agitated about "militant secularisation", may I remind her what secularism is and is not? What it is not is atheism, or a demand that atheism should predominate in the public space (or anywhere else, for that matter), or a campaign to close places of worship or stop people praying or believing in whatever they like.
Secularism is the conviction that religion and religious organisations should be distinct and separate from the state, and that no religion should hold any form of dominance or privilege in the public space over other religions or over those who subscribe to no religion. It is, in fact, a request for a level playing field, where everyone is treated equally and no one is discriminated against because they do or don't adhere to a particular set of beliefs. That seems eminently reasonable to me, and – given the tenacity with which many religions and religious organisations hold on to existing privileges, while seeking further to elevate themselves above the law, exempt themselves from rules that apply to everyone else, take over community schools and so on – it is perhaps secularists who can justifiably complain about militant religionists, rather than the other way round.
Mike Lim
Bolton
• I find it astonishing and, frankly, obscene that Lady Warsi should choose to attack secularists during an official visit to a man who orchestrated the cover-up of global child rape and torture by Catholic clergy. Geoffrey Robertson QC's devastating book, The Case of the Pope, is an excellent distillation of that case. If Lady Warsi hasn't read it, I suggest it will give her a valuable insight into the man she is indulging with an official visit.
As for "intolerant" secularism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's article in the current edition of Newsweek – which reveals that terrorist attacks on Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia rose by over 300% between 2003 and 2010 – suggests that it is not unbelievers who pose the real threat to Christians.
Michael Reed
West Dorking, Surrey
• Before anyone rushes in to praise Warsi's comments to a very religious audience about "intolerant secularism", they might do well to check a few history books. These are heavily weighted with tales not just of "intolerant religions" but intolerant sects, often of the same religion. It was the religious, not the secularists, that coined and bandied about the word "heretic" and were intolerant enough to burn those they considered as heretics at the stake. Such reactions between the religious still contain much more intolerance, often culminating in significant amounts of bloodshed, than anything the secularists have done or proposed.
IJ Gibson
Ullapool, Highland
• Christians are becoming an endangered species! Where has our much vaunted "tolerance" disappeared to? Like it or not western European culture is based in the Judeo-Christian traditions of moral philosophy. There are very many committed Christians, and considerably more people who consider themselves to be vaguely Christian, in the UK.
The salient point here is that the majority of councillors in Bideford apparently had little or no objection to prayers being said before meetings, yet the court did not take account of this majority opinion (Judge rules against prayers in town hall, 11 February). In favouring the case made by the secular society and the councillor whose atheistic sensibilities were offended, the court has effectively undermined the majority view of the culture, faith and traditions of the realm. While we value diversity of culture and faith, including the secularist and atheist belief systems, we should not forget that the moral compass we generally follow is intrinsically Christian.
Thelma Carroll
Tipperary, Ireland
• Having read Giles Fraser (Live and let live, 15 February) and Julian Baggini (A heavy cross to bear, G2, 15 February) on religion and secularism, I have to ask, not is religion under threat, but is the church Christian? The government's austerity measures that have contributed to the spread of poverty in this country, especially among children (supported by the former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey); the prejudice against women (Roman Catholic church and some sections of the Anglican church); the prejudice against gay people; the puerile nonsense from the Republican Baptist church in America; all suggest that the church is not Christian. Of course, most of this prejudice comes from the right of the political spectrum. It was Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century and Charles Dickens in the 19th century who said that Conservatives are stupid!
Rev Michael Land
Hereford, Herefordshire
• I wonder which "part of our religious heritage" Lady Warsi wishes to hold on to for the creation of social harmony. The Crusaders, led by Richard I, defending Jerusalem and the Holy Land against infidels? The pope excommunicating the country because King John wouldn't appoint the bishops he wanted? Henry II and Thomas Becket? The ongoing troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries which underlie the ongoing Troubles in Ireland and contributed so much to the development of social harmony there? Henry VIII turning from defending the faith to creating a new church, and so dissolving the Catholic monasteries; the gunpowder plot (religious extremists trying to blow up parliament); the civil war, Catholics being barred from public office; the ongoing discrimination against the Jews etc? The British tradition of tolerance is the result of a long battle against our worst instincts and one of the few positive outcomes of the second world war.
I want equality and tolerance as the keystones of our society. I want people to be taught to think for themselves, to question and to test propositions. I also want a society which, as we do at present, says "yes you can believe but you can't physically or verbally attack other people for being who they are, and if you provide a public service you provide it to everyone equally".
Chris Corby
London
• During the present debate about secularism I am reminded about Lloyd Geerings book Christianity Without God in which he believes that the modern secular world is not the anti-Christian enemy it is often made out to be, but the logical continuation of the Judeo-Christian cultural stream. He sees the modern secular form of Christian culture as the logical consequence of the basic doctrines of the trinity and the incarnation.
Geering refers to the great German philosopher Hegel as giving a radically new interpretation to the incarnation and resurrection whereby the Christ figure symbolised the fact that God had become one with humankind.
Similarly, in this country, Don Cupitt suggests that the secularisation of religion has had the effect of sacralising life.
Michael Hering
Hednesford, Staffordshire