29 September 1995

Dear Sir,

As a new member of the Tyndale Society I would like to make the following general observations on the impact the rediscovery of Tyndale has made in reassessing my own Christian worship.

Having been brought up in a Church of England school I wonder that only at age 50 do I learn what an enormous contribution Tyndale made to its bedrock. Having read David Daniell's biography of Tyndale I am further overwhelmed at the comparative small-mindedness of More, and even Erasmus, in the scope of their scholarship and reactions to Tyndale, and wonder how such heroic, wholesome virtue and accurate scholarship on Tyndale's part could have been overlooked for so long. Certainly the stone that was rejected turns out to be the cornerstone.

Finding it hard enough to find a church that uses both the King James VI Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, now that I have started to read the Tyndale translations of the OT and NT I dream of attending authentic church services using his translations in services run on the Tudor prototype.* The rediscovery of Tyndale by your notable patrons will, I hope, percolate down to ordinary people, since it has enormous implications for Church of England worship which has so decayed during my adulthood, to my utter dismay.

I hope very much the Tyndale Society will find ways to bring the implications of Tyndale's work to bear on Church reform at large, bringing hope to people who have become alienated from Anglicanism because of the denatured language and rituals introduced over recent decades. I, for one, rarely go to church now for this reason — and I think I speak for thousands.

Yours faithfully

*(?perhaps in Westminster Abbey)

© Ayeshah Haleem
(address supplied)