A church leader has described his parishioners as ''crude and vulgar''
booze-fuelled drunkards who are ruining life in an historic British city.

Canon Alan Nugent slammed the people of Lincoln in a chapter letter complaining about the behaviour of men and women enjoying wild nights out in the city.

The outspoken reverend, who is subdean at the city's 1,000-year-old cathedral, claims women ''demean'' themselves on nights filled with ''obscenities and expletives''.

He complained that a society plagued by ''vulgar behaviour'' has replaced the city's historic Christian values.

Furious Canon Nugent added: ''Weekend evenings in the town and increasingly in the Bailgate area become noisy, crude and uncouth.

''What upsets me so much is that young women demean themselves. Yet this is not an age issue. I have witnessed crude and vulgar behaviour in people of different ages.

''Exchequergate and Minster Yard, often in the early hours, resonate to called conversation which seem only to consist of a series of shouted expletives and obscenities. It is so very sad.

''Christianity no longer has significant influence on the way people behave.

''The deliberate attempt to remove the Christian faith from the national life, or at least seriously to marginalise it, which I have witnessed time and again during the period of my ministry, has succeeded.

''In its place a style of society, very crude, very unattractive has emerged, which demonstrates itself so often in vulgar behaviour.

''The Christian faith is concerned with values, behaviour and morals because it presents the highest estimate of what humanity is, should be and should aspire to.

''Because God shared our humanity in Christ and because we are made in God's image then how humanity develops and how human beings behave is essential to the Christian understanding of life.

''Crass, crude, vulgar behaviour is not something that can be or should be seen as an isolated phenomenon or a passing phase.

''It is symptomatic of what happens when a value system, in our case a Christian one, is deconstructed. ''

Canon Nugent was appointed Subdean at Lincoln Cathedral in 2003 is responsible for the fabric of the cathedral and the works department.

He held responsibility for a parish in Sunderland for seven years before being appointed Director of Education in the Diocese of Durham.

In 1997 Director of Ministry and Training in the Diocese of Lincoln.

According to his website Canon Nugent enjoys musicals, is fascinated by opera and has recently renewed his boyhood love of walking in the Peak District.

Lincoln Cathedral is regarded as one of the finest medieval buildings in Europe, which towers above Lincoln, a prominent landmark for miles around.

Attracting thousands of tourists every year experts believe the the imposing West Front incorporates the surviving part of the first Romanesque Cathedral from 1072.