January 23 Letters: Prayers for the seemingly hopeless cause of faith unity

THE Week of Prayer for Christian Unity takes place every year from January 18-25. Each year the Christian denominations make a few feeble efforts towards unity. This year the week coincides with the greatest feeling of world disunity I have experienced in all my 78 years.

Consider Judaism, Christianity and Islam, faiths in order of coming into being. Jews claim a piece of land in the Middle East and steal land from their Muslim neighbours. Within Judaism there is a variety of sects. This faith appears to have a not very active missionary element, except to land grab!

Christianity – a religion with numberless denominations, between which there are many serious ethical disagreements. In the West, Christianity is in decline; its missionary work feeble.

Islam – a religion about 1,400 years old and in some sort of Reformation as happened to Christianity when it was about 1,400 years old. This faith is very energetic in its missionary work and the zeal of its fanatics obvious in the awful events in Paris, Syria, Iraq, Niger, Nigeria etc etc.

Moderate Muslims cannot equate with the falling ethical standards of the “Christian” West, for example – abortion on demand, nearly 50 per cent of children born out of wedlock, same sex “marriage”, a failure to keep Sunday special etc. I wish there was a solution to all this.

Probably the only one will be when all the factions talk to each other. Could be at Doomsday at the earliest, I wonder? The whole world needs to start to pray, as a starter.

From: Ken Cooke, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

THE fact that in recent times Germany has been a successful economy and a healthy democracy offers absolutely no cause for Arthur Quarmby and D Wood (The Yorkshire Post, January 16) to suppose our good neighbour has ambitions of empire.

Agreed, the country was at the core of two terrible World Wars but, remember, the Kaiser’s aggression was pretty par for the course in that era. Practically all European countries indulged in empire building.

From: Howard Scaife, Backstone Way, Ilkley.

ARTHUR Quarmby expressed his fear of Germany ruling the EU and referred to WWI and WWII. He should be more worried about the enemy within. Those who do not study history repeat the mistakes.