Editor,

RE: "How to dress for Church services” (The New Times, September 29).

That is always the problem of institutional religions, putting form over substance, which explains why many ostensibly religious people’s moral values are no more than skin-deep.

Clothing and outside accouterments do not demonstrate a person’s morality, which is what religion is supposed to inculcate; actual behaviour does.

Do religious institutions focus so much on influencing people’s external trappings because they have failed to affect their basic behaviour and do not believe they can really ever influence their behavioural change in a positive manner?

The focus on external signals would seem to underline that that is indeed the case.

Mwene Kalinda