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SIR – The Church of England is in a bad way, and the succession to Justin Welby is a case in point.
Notwithstanding the increasing numbers of plausible candidates distancing themselves from consideration, in discussing the situation with colleagues, we are all hard-pressed to think of anybody suitable. How the Church and the Anglican Communion resolve this is not clear, but the task for the next Archbishop of Canterbury must be to return to basics. We must become a pastoral and spiritual organisation again, and put the inherited faith of the nation at the centre of what we do.
It will require someone of stern mettle to achieve this, as the rot has gone deep.
Rev Simon Douglas Lane
Hampton, Middlesex
SIR – Justin Welby has said that he was overwhelmed by the number of child abuse cases he faced when he was Archbishop of Canterbury (report, March 30).
It needs to be recognised that these cases did not occur in a sudden surge, but accumulated over time. He did not act quickly to resolve them, nor adequately investigate the reasons why so many members of the clergy had committed such acts.
Most of all, he appears not to have interrogated why the culprits were appointed to their positions of trust in the first place.
He may well have been overwhelmed, but this was in part caused by his lack of courage and inability to take decisive action when required.
Mick Ferrie
Mawnan Smith, Cornwall
SIR – Justin Welby said that he forgives John Smyth, the most prolific abuser associated with the Church of England. Yet forgiveness is not within his gift; it is for the abused to grant.
Huw Wynne-Griffith
London W8
SIR – You report (March 27) that two in five people raised as Christians have lost their faith. I am one such person.
I watched as Cathy Newman, the plucky member of the Channel 4 news team, exposed and then pursued the Canadian-born British barrister, John Smyth QC, concerning his appalling acts of physical and sexual abuse.
I find it astonishing that Justin Welby has said that he forgives this prolific abuser. According to the established Church of our nation, who exactly can now be sent to hell?
Malcolm Watson
Ryde, Isle of Wight
SIR – As one of two churchwardens of a tiny rural parish in Cornwall, I heartily agree with William Sitwell about over-zealous, if well-meaning, safeguarding demands made on volunteers in the Church of England (Features, March 29).
He also highlights the increasingly frantic attempts to persuade a younger generation to come to church, the consequence of which is that elderly but faithful congregations such as ours are often ignored.
Interregnums are increasingly frequent and last longer. This represents a significant saving to the Church. Moreover, there is a rush to merge parishes into large benefices – again, saving money. Such benefices inevitably mean that small rural churches lose their regular Sunday service times, and this is yet another reason for declining congregations.
Our village population is 220, and our average congregation is 27. We pay nearly £10,000 per annum to the diocese, and also have to fund insurance, heating, lighting and repairs to our Grade I listed church, which, of course, we do not own.
We are extremely fortunate that we have an excellent half-time priest, who looks after us and a much larger neighbouring parish. Yet it is now deemed too expensive, despite the fact that both parishes pay their way, and we are being urged to merge with another large town to form a benefice.
Surely it is time for the Church to support the elderly, ensure that they receive good pastoral care, and demonstrate that those in small rural parishes who value traditional worship are just as important as the guitar-wielding evangelicals in our towns and cities.
S Funnell
Golant, Cornwall
Victims of tariff war
SIR – In his tariff war, one might have thought that President Trump would show leniency toward the poorest countries.
In fact, the very poor Lesotho was targeted by tariffs of 50 per cent; for Madagascar it was 47 per cent; for Mauritius 40 per cent; and for Botswana 38 per cent. If he hadn’t already cut off most international aid, at least something would have remained.
Mr Trump will go down in history as not only the worst of American presidents, but also the cruellest.
Sylvio Le Blanc
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
SIR – Donald Trump has just invented a whole new layer of administrative complexity for customs and imports, just when Elon Musk is busy sacking federal employees. This does not add up.
I give it six months before he finds the tariffs are unworkable. My advice to our Government: save your powder and watch the fireworks.
Frank Booth
Shurdington, Gloucestershire
SIR – Guy Kelly’s article (Features, March 31) on investigations into Covid lab leaks referred to a supposedly secure, encrypted messaging system called Signal being hacked by the Russian security service in 2022.
This allegedly resulted in sensitive correspondence being copied, edited, mixed with false items and republished as disinformation.
This is the same Signal that was used recently by senior members of the US defence department to discuss bombing Yemen. I wonder how widely it has been used, and for how long.
Tim Oaks
Buxton, Derbyshire
The slave trade today
SIR – How considerate of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to provide a “recovery room” for any visitor who is overwhelmed by its exhibition about the slave trade (report, March 30).
Presumably the museum will continue to provide it if recalling other histories of slavery, such as that practised by the Vikings in the ninth century, or under the Roman and Egyptian empires.
Slavery – the subjugation of one people by another – did not begin or end with the African slave trade to the Americas, tragic though this was.
Totally unjustifiably, slavery can still be found in the world today. It should be acknowledged and stamped out. In this regard, the recovery room could perhaps become a room of prayer.
Rev C Blair Gillon
Ballinluig, Perthshire
Solar storm threat
SIR – Nick Dodson (Letters, March 30) is right to emphasise the risk to the UK from solar storms. However, the possible consequences of another Carrington Event are even more dire than he says, and are exacerbated by the push towards net zero. Restarting the grid under what is known as the Black Start protocol becomes significantly harder with renewables, as they may not be available when needed.
The potential damage to power transformers north and south of latitude 50 degrees is so great that there may not be enough copper to replace those that have been burnt out, leading to a real likelihood of the country living with electricity shortages for many months. Places relying on standby generators, such as hospitals, will quickly find themselves out of diesel, as tanker drivers struggle to find their way without GPS.
Will the Government be prepared? It seems unlikely.
Henry Dodds
Poundbury, Dorset
A Ministry for Men
SIR – Oliver Pritchett’s mockery of the proposal for a Ministry for Men (Features, March 30) does not do justice to the many men’s issues that are ignored or not taken seriously.
These include the fact that 80 per cet of homeless people are male, and 75 per cent of completed suicides are carried out by men. Boys and young men are underachieving at all levels of education, and data from the Office for National Statistics for 2022, based on police reports, estimates that 699,000 men each year are victims of domestic abuse.
We desperately need a Ministry for Men to address these problems.
Dr William Robertson
Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Shakespeare in China
SIR – In the early 2000s, I was visiting our operations in Guangzhou, China, and on the last evening I was asked to speak at a staff dinner, attended by about 100 Chinese people, mostly young.
At the end of the talk about our worldwide operations, the local manager asked for questions from the audience. The second question, from a young lady, was about the fact that my office overlooked the Globe Theatre in Southwark (“Global Shakespeare”, Letters, March 30). She asked if I had seen it being built. She wanted to know, as did many of the subsequent questioners, about Shakespeare and his works. By chance, in the 1990s my young daughter and I had met Sam Wanamaker at the Globe Museum as the building was starting.
The questions went on for half an hour, and included some about Charlotte Brontë. Worldwide operations were never mentioned again.
Bob Knox
Newdigate, Surrey
Nouns and clowns
SIR – Aged eight, I was taught the difference between practice and practise with the rhyme: “C is for clown and clown is a noun” (Letters, March 30). Invaluable to me, but do today’s children know anything about nouns and verbs?
Mike Brooks
Sutton Coldfield
SIR – As a primary teacher in the 1970s, I offered a prize to the pupil who came up with the best mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets from the sun. The winner was a girl called Lisa who produced this couplet: “My versatile elephant made jam/ Sitting under Nicky’s pram”.
Not only did it rhyme and make reasonable sense (she did have a baby brother called Nicky, though no elephant), but she also rather cleverly found a way of differentiating between the two “Ms” by using the first and last letters of Mercury for “my”, and the first two of Mars for “made”.
All these years later, I still remember it and use it, and I hope Lisa does, too.
Mike Day
Frampton Cotterell, Gloucestershire
SIR – Our history teacher in the 1960s instructed us to use the mnemonic BROM to recall victories of the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession: Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet.
Richard Moore
Bangor, Co Down
SIR – I grew up in a small village in the Shetland Isles. In my first year of primary school, the teacher asked if any of us knew how to remember the colours of the rainbow. I stuck my hand up, and shouted: “Richard of York goes boozing in Vienna”.
When asked who had taught me this, I replied, “My father” – and received a knowing nod.
Christopher Ash
Johannesburg, South Africa
Dogs lying in wait for unsuspecting burglars
SIR – Stuart Harrington (Letters, March 30) says that a dog is the greatest deterrent to a burglar.
My elderly mother-in-law was alone in my house when two men attempted to break in. They did not know that, behind the stable door, through which they intended to enter, were four German Shepherds. Although one was elderly, two of the others would have taken no prisoners. The interlopers beat a hasty retreat, and the police agreed that, had the dogs not been there, the outcome might have been different.
When renewing my home insurance, I cited my dogs as a security asset, but my insurer refused to accept my claim.
Colin Cummings
Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire
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Justin Welby’s successor must restore the Church to its proper purpose
Plus: Victims of tariff war; today’s slave trade; the threat from solar storms; a Ministry for Men; and dogs deterring burglars