LETTER : In disbelief

GERALDINE Bedell's interview with Jonathan Sacks ("Faith in whose future?", 12 March) was too indulgent. The main thesis of his book Faith in the Future - that the family is "the arena of the central moral crisis of our time" - is ludicrous in a world which is divided by inequality, deprived of liberty, and destroyed by violence. His attempts to blur individualism and collectivism and to blame all the ills of our age on the Enlightenment and utilitarianism are ridiculous in the light of what progress there has been during the past couple of centuries.

And his argument that Orthodox Judaism has something to teach us today is absurd in a society where almost no one believes in Jewish scriptures or Jewish law and where a third of the population doesn't believe in any religion at all.

Nicolas Walter

Humanist Centre

London WC1