Gaming immigration

sir – Which organisation is being more naive about immigration: the Church of England, which you report (November 17) is “under fire” for helping asylum seekers to “game” the system by converting to Christianity – or the Home Office, which allowed the Liverpool suicide bomber to remain in the country for seven years after his asylum application had been rejected?

Nigel Lewis

Farnham, Surrey

sir – I wonder how many Christians like me were bemused to read that you could become a Christian by undertaking a five-week course.

I didn’t realise a qualification was necessary, believing instead that you just had to accept Jesus into your life. Eve Wilson

Hill Head, Hampshire

sir – I can vouch for the dubious nature of the Alpha course, having been persuaded by the evangelical church I then attended that it was a vital step to full participation.

Over a series of weeks we were lectured by enthusiastic people and partook of communal meals (absence being frowned on), while many of our questions about doctrine were dismissed.

What mattered was that we should attend the high point of the course, the “day away” when we would receive the Holy Spirit. Nearer the time we were warned that due to some participants’ financial situations we would have to simply have a day at the church, which “wouldn’t work as well”. On the day, the leaders were noticeably frustrated that not one of us spoke in tongues or showed any outward sign of anything having happened. After prompting, various “prophecies” were spoken by some, which were seized on as proof that the day had been successful.

I later discovered that one of the attendees was there only because of another: they began an affair during the course. As far as I know, all the attendees have since left the Church.

To have completed an Alpha course does not mean that you are a Christian, any more than to have completed a driving test means you are and will always be a safe driver.

Malinda Law

Penkridge, Staffordshire