Not as fast-acting as an axe but just as effective: one day (sadly when I wasn't home) Mum answered the door to a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. "Do you read the Bible?" says one. Mum, who was in the middle of the washing-up, is at this point wearing her "Plants of the Bible" apron, little pictures with chapter-and-verse under each one. "Well, actually, yes, I do," she says. "Ah!" says the other, "we'd like to talk to you about God."

"Well, you've come to the right place," says Mum, delighted, "do come through." And in our sitting-room, quietly drinking coffee, are about fifteen vicars, priests, ministers and pastors of every Christian denomination you can think of. It's at about this point that the Witnesses realise that Mum is the minister of the local United Reformed Church, and that it's her turn to host the monthly ecumenical coffee morning for the local clergy.

Now, with all due respect to the Witnesses (or to their conditioning), they do go for it. They actually try to convince these fifteen-plus vicars that they're all doing it wrong, and ought to be Jehovah's Witnesses instead. But every time they mess up a theological point, the liberal denominations lay into them; every time they mess up a historical point, the Catholics and Anglicans lay into them; and every time they mess up a Scriptural point, the Pentecostalists lay into them. After about half an hour of what used to be called a full and frank exchange of views, the Witnesses skulk away with their tails between their legs. They never, ever came back.

I suppose really that what this goes to show, is that there's nothing like a tough morning's ecumenism to make one want to put some apostates to the sword like in the good old days...

Peter