Our moral arbiters are so keen to see a perceived threat to peoples' well-being when there is none. It has become the norm in what is supposed to be a democracy to take offence at the least slight when a small minority need to be protected against the majority. The recent news that the Lord's Prayer advert has been banned by cinemas is only to be expected. Who exactly is humiliated or offended that it has to be withdrawn? The country has been in such a moral decline that it is impossible to find a child who knows a Christmas carol or will go around the doors singing carols at Christmas.

The faith of this country, whether people understand this or not, is Christian, with the Queen as the Head of the Church of England. My reason for writing this post is that I am curious because during my researches I came across a rather unusual prayer that used to be  recited within living memory in Great Britain, especially Wales: The Epistle of Jesus Christ and Abgarus,King of Edessa. The prayer is regarded as apocryphal by the church, but the point is relevant: would it be censored today if people were incensed by the words? The prayer was said when a person was ill in the family. Sometimes the tract was framed, other tracts were kept in the family Bibles. People believed it to be the word of God and the words spoken by Jesus to be his. The curious tract is well worth a look.