It's intriguing to discover that the Guardian newspaper has a reverse problem to The Friend. Whereas our readers berate us because there's not enough religion – and particularly Christianity - in the paper, Guardian readers apparently blanch when there's too much. Witness the current dialogue on the Guardian's website between the reader's editor and his readers. One had written scathingly – 'yet another religious article! Please could you tell me why there is now so much religion in the Guardian? What prompted this move to go from being a secular paper to the most religious of all the papers?'

Poor Ian! Such ingratitude! And is it true?

After one of those electronic searches which are so popular today in settling arguments, he found that the paper did indeed lead the field in mentioning Christianity – from 770 mentions in 1985 to 2,341 in 2005, which was more than the other papers.

The complaining readers were obviously not aware of the newspaper's roots in non-conformist Christianity. But the older staff were. Ian conducted an internal poll and the northern editor pointed out that the paper's legacy was Quaker and Unitarian. 'John Edward Taylor, the founder, was the son of a Quaker and became one of the largely Unitarian circle who founded the Guardian…C.P. Scott (its influential early editor) was the son of a Unitarian minister.' The northern editor suggests that 'Quakerism and Unitarianism' share a moral imperative for social action 'which the Guardian exemplifies.'
That disgruntled reader might do well to read the 1821 prospectus for the (then) Manchester Guardian which promises the paper will 'zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious liberty'.