My Christian faith is central to my life, I do my utmost to live by the teachings in the bible, although freely admit I regularly fail. So this is not an invitation for those who know me to point out my faults!

I was brought up in part of the established church, and am grateful for its basic teachings. But I grew to hate it, not because of what it taught from the bible, but because of how it tried to use God’s teachings to manipulate and control people. Too often what was preached was condemnation which is contrary to everything Jesus taught. Christianity ultimately has a message of freedom and liberation. I stayed away from the church for a number of years because of the condemnation and control.

In my time away from any church I kept my faith, but it did not grow. I was not able to discuss it with other people, be challenged, test what I believed, or be nurtured.

I was fortunate; a friend introduced me to her church. Its teachings were much less liberal that the ones I grew up with, but it was a church which welcomes people and respects who they are and their individuality. Yes, certain behaviour patterns are discouraged, if they are contrary to biblical teachings, but not if they are contrary to the church elders’ personal preferences.

Do we try and ‘convert’ people – well if we had a magic wand and could convert the world we would. But that is not reality, nor what God would want. Our freewill is a gift from him, and no-one has a right to take that away. We do have an open door, and organise events for people to come and learn more about what we believe, we advertise these sometimes, and tell friends. Why, because not only do we believe what we have is good for people, but, to be very unfashionable, we believe it is right. But that does not give us the right to push our faith onto anyone, all we do is make it easily available for those want to know more.

So is this the organised religion which I so carefully turned my back on, and is it wrong? Unquestionably I think it is right. It is organised to an extent, it helps to have a building to meet in, to agree when we are going to do certain things, to have people who will take on certain tasks, some practical, some spiritual. However using religion to coerce people into a particular form of behaviour, because society or government or even a body of people called the church wants it; in my view, will always be wrong.

cariad