Bishops, rabbis and morality

8 March

From Mr Nicholas Walter

Sir: Jonathan Sacks spoils his plea for a return to the family ("Finding our way back to the family", 6 March) by linking it with claims about morality and religion, It is not true that the family is "first and foremost, a moral institution" or "the birthplace of the moral sense". Families may be moral, but they may be immoral or amoral, and morality has many sources outside the family. It is not true that "the congruence between family feeling and religious experience is close".

Children may seem to be a form of immortality, but so may art and literature or other forms of human fellowship, and religion and the family are as often opposed as they are allied. The problem of the family is difficult enough without bringing irrational dogma into the question.

Yours sincerely,

NICOLAS WALTER

Humanist Centre

London WC1

6 March