shows that it is, indeed, the last refuge of unreconstructed homophobes and men who don't like women very much. If not, name me one other UK organisation (apart from another church) where the ceiling remains more opaque than glass. PeterNW1 Not sure about Jesus initiating a religious community. Apart from asking a few disciples to remember him when they ate and drank, he didn't give them any rules or rituals, and wasn't exactly encouraging of any sort of hierarchy. He wasn't a favourite of the official religious people. Many of the churches Paul wrote to met in homes. Of course, any human community needs a culture in which to function and will have its 'elders'. But the church is on very dodgy ground when it claims that its formal organisation has much to do with the Jesus who hung out with the 'outcasts'. I really wish Giles hadn't spoilt the interesting article with that sideways dig. Plenty of secularists (by which I think he really means atheists- though he's not the only one who mislabels) would have no doubt been involved across Putney on Monday night in practical discussions about changing the world, alongside people of a variety of other faiths. However, Giles is in the vicinity of the real point . Churches, bound in part by shared theism and the ethical commitments of their congregation, have long been places where social capital is built, where organisations are born and where change at a local level and beyond begins. Should