AS a believer I do not expect the nation to be Christian; how can it be since the word is used specifically to define an individual who has consciously committed to follow a particular way of life?

No one can commit a whole nation to do that.

Mr Golightly (Letters, April 25) rightly describes what happens when a ruler attempts to impose his or her concept of faith, regardless of the values that govern each individual’s behaviour.

Democracy enables every voter to show which candidate most closely reflects his or her own values.

We shall see in a month the values that the majority of this nation choose to be guided by. Some, no doubt, like the individual I saw last Saturday in a crowded Coney Street, will not want to identify themselves with any candidate expressing Christian and humanitarian values.

He kicked a crippled busker’s accordion and the money donated into the gutter, telling him to go home to his own country. As a final threat, he said he would make sure that he did not beg in York again.

However this nation is described, my experience is that the values which that individual exhibited are not those of the majority of Britons.

Maurice Vassie, Chair York Christian Aid, Deighton, York.