World Notes BRITAIN

Imagine six weeks' worth of British mail, more than a billion envelopes, stamped with the postmark JESUS IS ALIVE! It's enough to drive a nonbeliever round the bend. So it was no surprise that an outcry ensued when the slogan premiered last week, courtesy of Paul Slennett, owner of a religious book shop, who paid $88,500 for the postmark.

Since 1917, the British mail service has bolstered revenues by selling stamp space. But Slennett's slogan has raised a ruckus and has prompted the National Secular Society, which claims that about 26% of Britons are atheist or agnostic, to retaliate in kind. It is stamping its envelopes with the words JESUS IS A MYTH.