From Peter Buesnel.
I would like to respond to the letter from Michael de Petrovsky (JEP, 13 September).

Point one: I totally agree that being incarcerated for not saying prayers is ludicrous. Under no circumstances should it ever be allowed to happen.

Point two: We see headlines every day: gun crime, stabbings, murders, rapes, terrorism, in a world overflowing with violence, hatred and corruption. We begin to see the necessity of God’s judgment. If one of these things happened to you, would you want revenge? What if God told you to take the Gospel to the worst offenders – how would you respond? Jonah ran away. God stopped him, turned him around. Jonah preached to Ninevah. The people and the city was saved, showing the extent of God’s grace. Salvation is there if you want it, but it is your choice. What’s offensive about that? The book of Jonah shows the full extent of God’s love and compassion. No one is beyond redemption, and it doesn’t mention a whale anywhere!

Point three: It is often said that religion should be kept out of politics, and I can see the point when you have an extreme right-wing religious neo-conservative government leading the world’s most powerful nation. But answer me this: where would Barak Obama be if it wasn’t for the religious politics of Reverend Martin Luther King? Where would Poland be without the religious politics of Archbishop Karel Jozef Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II)? And how central were they to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in bringing down the Soviet-backed puppet government? Vital!

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s opposition to apartheid was forceful and peaceful. He was outspoken in South Africa and overseas in his condemnation of apartheid and his religious politics were instrumental in its demise and the creation of the new South Africa. Sex with 13-year-old girls would still be legal if it wasn’t for devout Christian Josephine Butler’s political campaign with WT Stead, which raised the age of consent to 16 – only 123 years ago.

Finally, where would Martin Luther King, Barak Obama and English football’s latest hero, Theo Walcott be, if not for William Wilberforce’s abolitionist movement? Mr de Petrovsky’s argument is flawed, populist and plainly wrong.
On his final point, Jesus was a real, historical person. God made man. He fulfilled prophecies written hundreds of years before He was born about where He would be born, how He would be rejected, tried, condemned and executed, mocked and insulted, even down to the form of execution.

Christ brings justice, hope and forgiveness and it is free for those who want it today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next century.
2 Clos Philippe, Rue des Prés,
St Saviour.