Faith, hope, and charity

I fired off this letter in response to Roy Hattersley's column in yesterday's Guardian.

Dear Letters Editor,

Roy Hattersley's fatuous 'Faith does breed charity' Comment (Guardian 12 September) gives atheists a bad name and as an atheistic humanist, I feel grossly insulted by it.

I have done house-to-house collections on behalf of a number of charities, including Help the Aged, Asthma UK, MacMillan Cancer Relief and Amnesty International, and I regularly give saleable items to my local charity shops. One certainly doesn't have be a God-botherer to show care and compassion towards one's fellow human beings.

As for the Salvation Army, it exists mainly, as its name implies, to save souls and as Hattersley is aware, like other evangelical Christian institutions, it is rabidly homophobic. How could it be otherwise when it bases its moral values on what it calls "Holy Scripture"?

George Broadhead
Secretary