So on the relative risks to our God-given bodies, Bishop Gladwin is just plain wrong. He could reasonably retort that what we must now call units of alcohol are as damaging to our organs wherever they are consumed.

That may be strictly true and I’m no physician but I’m guessing that an honest doctor would say that a bellyful of first-growth claret and a decent cognac is going to be less harmful than the equivalent in lager, rum-and-cokes and half-a-dozen alcopops as a digestif.

The middle classes have been the alcoholic villains of late, but I simply don’t buy the case against us. Per capita alcohol consumption in Britain has only recently returned to the levels that we were drinking in 1912, and our diets have improved immeasurably since then.

Read the whole article.

The Rt Rev John Gladwin, the Bishop of Chelmsford, criticised the double-standards he claims exist in the attitudes of more affluent sections of society towards Britain’s “binge-drinking” culture.

He argued that they could not condemn teenagers’ behaviour if they are getting drunk themselves, and claimed that they are ultimately responsible for the rise in alcoholism.

His comments follow the release of official figures that show one in four adults are putting their health at risk by drinking too much and that 360,000 11 to 15 year-olds get drunk every week.

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A friend of mine told me recently that he had received an invitation from a London borough, in which he was a parish priest, that had at the top a statement proclaiming that the borough was “multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-truth”. The first two were clearly descriptive of the number of distinct cultures among the population, and the reality of the existence of churches, mosques and gudwaras and their communities in that borough. What was much more questionable was the commitment to “multi-truth”. Taken to its logical conclusion (and that phrase implies that we have some common measure of what is true) it would be impossible to have a dialogue about any issue because there would be no ground rules. There would simply be assertion. “Your truth” and “my truth” ends in subjective affirmations. In fact, when two people meet, discuss, argue and try to convince one another they are, for all the passion with which they maintain their positions, trying to convince the other of the truth of what they hold. Our convictions are shaped by our experience and upbringing, but also by the understanding of the world that we inherit. Although the scientist needs faith to test a hypothesis, to set up the experiment the very hypothesis is framed in a tradition of scientific understanding. “Your truth” and “my truth” does not work in understanding either the Universe or our human genetic make-up.

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Bishops’ expenses in the House of Lords were defended this week, as critics said they undermined the Church of England’s comments on MPs.

The president of the National Secular Society, Terry Sanderson, observed that some claims suggested a legalistic attitude similar to that in the House of Commons. He said: “Most of the bishops seem to be playing by the rules, although it is difficult to see why Tom Butler needed to attend the Lords on 83 days when he voted only 10 times. Given that he lives on the doorstep, I suppose it is easy for him to pop over, sign in and then pop back to his palace.

“We won’t be taking any sermons from him about the propriety of claiming expenses until he comes up with a satisfactory explanation for this.”

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ANGLICAN clergy and laity attending the launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in the UK and Ireland in London on July 6 will hear the Bishop of Rochester call for ”˜repentance and a renewed commitment to evangelism and mission’.

The launch of FCA in the UK and Ireland comes less than a year after the GAFCON conference in Jerusalem, leading to a Declaration of Orthodox beliefs to which Anglicans throughout the community have rallied as a sign of fellowship and solidarity. At a time when the Anglican church in North America and Canada is facing major splits between liberals and orthodox members, the FCA is providing a home, focus and support for orthodox churches in diocese and provinces which they believe they can no longer be aligned with, or have been excluded from over their beliefs.

Delegates gathering at Westminster Central Hall will hear from a wide range of international speakers, including Bishop Keith Ackerman, president of Forward in Faith (North America), Archbishop Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, and Baroness Caroline Cox. The morning sessions will focus on the global Anglican Communion, with welcome messages from the Archbishops of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya, before looking in detail at the key issues of unity, orthodoxy, the uniqueness of Christ and holiness of life. The Bishops of Chichester, the Rt Revd John Hind, and Fulham, the Rt Revd John Broadhurst will also speak.

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Pause on Ascension for a moment. The Ascension, frustratingly, is often radically misunderstood. The Ascension is not about Jesus going away and encouraging his followers to look forward to the time when they, too, will leave this sad old earth and follow him to heaven. The angels do not say to the watching disciples, ”˜This same Jesus, whom you have seen going into heaven, will look forward to welcoming you when you go to join him there,’ but ”˜this same Jesus, whom you have seen going into heaven, will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’. And the point of that so-called ”˜second coming’, or ”˜reappearance’ as several New Testament writers put it, is not that he will then scoop us up and take us away from earth to heaven, but that he will celebrate the great party, the great banquet, the marriage of heaven and earth, establishing once and for all his rescuing, ransoming, restoring sovereignty over the whole creation. ”˜The kingdom of this world,’ says John the Seer, ”˜has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he shall reign for ever and ever.’ Amen, we say at the Ascension. This is the real Feast of Christ the King, and the sooner we abolish the fake one that has recently been inserted into our calendar in late November the more likely we shall be to get our political theology sorted out. And, boy, do we need to sort it out right now. If at a time like this we cannot think and speak and act Christianly and wisely and clearly and sharply into the mess and muddle of the rulers of the world we really should be ashamed of ourselves. Jesus is already reigning, is already in charge of this world. ”˜All authority,’ he says at the end of Matthew’s gospel, ”˜has been given to me in heaven and on earth.’ When he returns he will complete that work of transformative, restorative justice; but it has already begun, despite the sneers of the sceptics and the scorn of the powerful, and we celebrate it with every Eucharist but especially today at Pentecost.

Why especially today? Because at Pentecost we discover, as in last week’s Collect, that the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen or comfort us and exalt us to the same place where our saviour Christ has gone before. In other words, the Spirit is the power of heaven come to earth, or to put it the other way the Spirit is the power that enables surprised earthlings to share in the life of heaven. And, to say it once more, the point about heaven is that heaven is the control room for earth. The claim of Pentecost, from Acts 2 and Ephesians 4 and Romans 8 and all those other great Spirit-texts in the New Testament, especially John 13””16, is precisely that the rule which the ascended Lord Jesus exercises on earth is exercised through his Spirit-filled people. No doubt we do need ”˜comforting’ in the modern sense of that word, cheering up when we’re sad. But we need, far more do we need, ”˜comforting’ in the older sense of ”˜strengthening’, strengthening-by-coming-alongside. Just as, in human ”˜comfort’, a strange thing happens, that the sheer presence, even the silent presence, alongside us of a friend gives us fresh courage and hope, how much more will the presence alongside us and within us of the Spirit of Jesus himself give us courage and hope not simply to cheer up in ourselves but to be strong to witness to his Lordship, his sovereign rule, over the world where human rulers mess it up and ignorant armies clash by night.

So being ”˜exalted to the place where Jesus has gone before’ is precisely not about being snatched away from this wicked world and its concerns. On the contrary, it is to be taken in the power of the Spirit to the place from which the world is run.

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It intrigues me that Church of England bishops seem to be regarded by the public today much as they were when I was consecrated to be one in 1970: namely as “a good thing for the country” at best, and at worst an amiable irrelevance. Perhaps this is because (as current polls suggest) most people still perceive themselves as believers in God.

None the less, I have come to the conclusion that too many bishops are being appointed for the health of the Church. As it is difficult for serving clergy to agree openly with this view (partly out of loyalty to their bishop, partly because some of them might become bishops themselves), I hope that among the million-or-so faithful in the pews, someone might ponder my argument.

A few statistics first:

1. In 1961, there were 13,500 full-time parochial clergy in our Church; currently there are 8616.

2. In 1961, there were the same number of dioceses as there are now, 44; so there were and are 44 diocesan bishops. But the number of suffragan/area/provincial bishops (all full-time) has grown from 44 in 1961 to 70 now. Thus there are now 114 bishops responsible for 9000 clergy, whereas, less than 50 years ago, there were 88 bishops shepherding 13,500 clergy.

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It now seems a different age, but in fact it is less than two years since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. When he did so, he declared: “Now let the work of change begin.” Luckily, perhaps, the work of change was quickly snarled up. Today, Mr Brown barely has the authority to change a light bulb (an action, this newspaper has recently revealed, that MPs can charge to the taxpayer).

But one obscure, sudden change that the Prime Minister did institute was to remove his own role in appointing bishops in the Church of England.

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Watch it all courtesy of Stephen Sizer.

The Bishop of Rochester has called on the Government to ensure that British policy is effective at tackling the syllabus in Pakistan’s madrassas. ‘

Bishop Michael Nazi-Ali said in the House of Lords that the education in the country’s madrassas were “fuelling international education”.

He called for an assurance that “British aid policy for education will be effective this time in changing the syllabus in the madrassas”.

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The brief prayers, available to download on the Church of England’s website, have been designed to look like the revision cards used by school pupils.

They are even written like a revision aid, in a clear bullet-point style, and remind students to remain calm and keep a sense of perspective.

One of the crammers prayers is written by the Bishop of Lincoln, Rt Revd John Saxbee, who is also the Chair of the Church of England Board of Education.

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This week the Anglican Consultative Council meets in Jamaica. One of the items on its agenda is the latest draft for an Anglican Covenant. This is an opportune moment to ask if the draft is ”˜fit for purpose’ and if it will make any difference to the situation, if it is approved by the member churches of the Communion.

This latest draft of an Anglican Covenant, and its accompanying commentary, has taken account of the many responses and submissions made in respect of the earlier drafts. This means that the theological and ecclesiological sections of the proposed Covenant are stronger than they were before. A question remains as to why the Introduction is still not part of the Covenant. This weakens the theological basis of the Covenant, even if the drafters now tell us that it “shall be accorded authority in understanding the purpose of the Covenant” (4:4:1).
The first section opens by telling us that each church in the Covenant affirms its ”˜communion’ in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church but it does not say anything about the communion between or among particular churches which is the issue at the moment. What is the basis for such fellowship and how can one church recognise the presence of the Church of Jesus Christ in another? This section claims also that our mission is shared with other churches and traditions beyond the Covenant. Which churches do the drafters have in mind and what is the extent of this sharing? If we are not careful, this could lead to the very carte blanche the Covenant is being designed to avoid.

In section 3 we are told that the churches of the Anglican Communion are bound together “through the common counsel of the bishops in conference” but this reference back to the 1930 Lambeth Conference is not, as we shall see, fully reflected in the decision-making processes proposed by the drafters.

There is again the usual Anglican attempt to having your cake and eating it. This draft moves away unhelpfully from the previous language of autonomy in interdependence to a renewed emphasis on autonomy. The commentary claims that Anglicans wish to keep the autonomy of their churches but no biblical or apostolic evidence is provided for the sort of autonomy which could be acceptable, nor about its limits and dangers. We are told that adoption of the Covenant by a church does not “represent submission to any external ecclesiastical jurisdiction” (4:1:1) but surely the representative bodies of the Communion should have the power at least to determine what relations there should be among the provinces, depending on whether they subscribe to the Covenant or not. It is strange to regard such representative bodies of the churches themselves as ”˜external’.

My main difficulties, however, are with the final section (4:2): because the Nassau Draft was criticised for giving too much power to the Primates’ Meeting in determining compliance with the Covenant and the St Andrew’s Draft for doing the same with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council, ”˜Ridley’ has given the Joint Standing Committee the role of making a declaration of ”˜incompatibility with the Covenant’ and of making ”˜recommendations’ as to the ”˜relational consequences’ of actions incompatible with the Covenant. But the commentary makes it clear that there is no power to ”˜direct’ either the province causing offence or the response of any of the other provinces.

So whatever the Joint Standing Committee may say, the provinces can go their own sweet way which is precisely the situation as it is today and which has caused the problem we are all facing! In spite of a ringing endorsement of the 1930 Lambeth Conference on the teaching role of bishops in the earlier part of the draft, the new ”˜mechanism’ does not give them any special role, beyond ”˜advice’, nor does it provide for authoritative teaching that requires compliance for the sake of unity and truth. In other words, we are exactly where we have been these last six years. It may even be worse: The Windsor Report asked that those who had unilaterally breached the bonds of communion by their teaching and action should not participate in representative Anglican Councils. Such a request has hardly been taken seriously so far but the new draft Covenant envisages the possibility of both covenanted and non-covenanted churches continuing to belong to the Instruments of Communion and the commentary looks only to the far future for a resolution of this anomaly. This means that churches which do not agree to any communion-wide procedures for discipline, however diluted, can still continue to be invited to the Lambeth Conference and to attend the ACC and the Primates’ Meeting. In other words, there is no immediate change anticipated in the membership of these bodies regardless of whether a Covenant is agreed or not.

Neither the draft nor the commentary tell us anything about how much longer it will be before a Covenant is finally ratified.Will it be by the time of the next ACC or beyond that and, if so, how much longer – the next Lambeth Conference? How long can faithful Anglicans in the pew and the pulpit wait for the Anglican Communion to deliver and will it make any difference when it does?

–This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper, May 1, 2009 edition, page 12

Dr [John] Hartley outlines his plan in the latest issue of his parish magazine in an article headed “Let’s collectivise the bishop”. His scheme provides for:

* Reorganisation of all the dioceses to a size that could comfortably be led by one bishop and two suffragans;

* Abolition of the word “bishop”;

* Each diocese being headed by a “College of Oversight” consisting of three people, including at least one man and one woman;

* At every confirmation and ordination, all three people being present, each of them laying hands on all the candidates;

* In appointing the college, all of its members receiving the laying-on of hands from all the members of at least three other diocesan colleges of oversight.

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A leader of a prominent evangelical grouping in the Anglican war over gays has been appointed bishop to one of the oldest historic Episcopal seats in the country.

Although Sherborne, founded in 705, is no longer a see in its own right but an area in the Salisbury diocese covering Dorset, the appointment Dr Graham Kings as its bishop is one of the strongest signs yet that the Archbishop of Canterbury is winning the battle for Anglican unity.

Dr Kings is founder of the increasingly influential group Fulcrum, which publishes the writings of conservative evangelical Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright.

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I come to the twentieth chapter of John’s gospel once more, in awe as always of its simple but fathomless power. Recent writers have explored the way in which John’s gospel is focussed on the Temple in Jerusalem, and though the Temple is not mentioned in this chapter, John is the kind of writer who hopes that his readers will have picked up where things are going by now, and will make the connections for themselves. So what has he said so far, and how does it play out in this chapter?

Already in the Prologue, which balances chapter 20 in so many ways as the framework for the gospel, John has declared that the Word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst; he pitched his tent, came to dwell among us as in the Temple; and, in case there were any doubt, John says ”˜and we beheld his glory’. The return of God’s glory to dwell in the midst of his people was the great, unrealized hope of the last four hundred years before the time of Jesus; the Jewish people had come back from exile, but God’s glory, the Shekinah, had not returned. The later prophets insisted that God would come back, but nobody ever claimed it had happened. And this was the more to be regretted, because the Old Testament, in a wide variety of ways, had indicated that the Temple, and the presence of the living God within it, was to be the sign and the means of God’s filling not just a building but the whole earth with his glory.

But it is a main theme of the New Testament, often unnoticed, that the return of the Glory to dwell with God’s people was precisely what was going on in the ministry, and supremely in the death and resurrection, of Jesus.

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I don’t see the full Christian eschatology as the primary thing to talk about in evangelism. The primary thing is Jesus himself, and the vision of the loving, rescuing creator God we get when we focus on him. However, the vision of new heavens and new earth, and of God’s project, already begun in Jesus, to flood the whole creation with his restorative justice, does indeed generate a powerful evangelistic message: not just ‘you’re sinful, here’s how to escape the consequences’, but ‘your sinful life means you’re failing to be a genuine human being, contributing to God’s project of justice and beauty — here’s how the project got back on track, and here’s how you can be part of it, both in your own life being set right and made ‘something beautiful for God’ and in what you do THROUGH your life, bringing justice, hope, joy and beauty to God’s world as we look forward to the final day’… I’d better not go further or you’ll get the whole sermon?

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One of the senior bishops of the Church of England has cited the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale’s appointment as dean of Episcopal Divinity School as an example of the possible need for a new Anglican province in North America.

“That a promoter of abortion on demand, who describes abortionists as engaged in ”˜holy work’, might be given a senior position must call in question any possibility of normal relations with the province concerned,” wrote the Rt. Rev. Peter Robert Forster, Bishop of Chester in a letter to the Church of England Newspaper (April 9 edition). “If any right-thinking Christian has doubted the need for a new province in North America, they should ponder your astonishing report.”

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Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.

The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.

Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.

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The next Archbishop of Westminster has attacked the heads of the Premier League and Setanta Sports for holding football fixtures on Easter Day.

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who will be enthroned at Westminster next month, has written a strong letter of complaint to Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, and Trevor East, the director of sport at Setanta, for showing disdain for the religious traditions of Britain. Two Premier League games ”” Aston Villa v Everton and Manchester City v Fulham ”” are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

Writing as Archbishop of Birmingham, along with the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, the Right Rev David Urquhart, he accused the league and the broadcaster of disregarding the importance of Easter Day and treading on the sensitivities of their employees and football supporters.

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I have resigned as Bishop of Rochester after nearly 15 years. During that time, I have watched the nation drift further and further away from its Christian moorings. Instead of the spiritual and moral framework provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we have been led to expect, and even to celebrate, mere diversity. Not surprisingly, this has had the result of loosening the ties of law, customs and values, and led to a gradual loss of identity and of cohesiveness. Every society, for its wellbeing, needs the social capital of common values and the recognition of certain virtues which contribute to personal and social flourishing. Our ideas about the sacredness of the human person at every stage of life, of equality and natural rights and, therefore, of freedom, have demonstrably arisen from the tradition rooted in the Bible.

Different faiths and traditions will not necessarily produce the values and virtues which have been so prominent in the history of this country. It is quite wrong to presume that they will, as Gordon Brown appeared to do last week in his speech calling for “value-based” rules at St Paul’s Cathedral. Some faiths may emphasise social solidarity more than personal freedom, others publicly enforce piety over a nurturing of the interior life and yet others stress honour and shame rather than humility, service and sacrifice. It may be, of course, that there is a useful overlap among these traditions in terms of values by which to live. It may also be that people of different faiths can “own” many of the values produced by a Christian framework in this nation, but this cannot take place in a vacuum.

One of the surprising aspects of what you could call our values vacuum is the historical amnesia which is so prevalent today ”“ or, rather, a selective sort of amnesia.

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One of the popular traditional hymns for Palm Sunday was written by Henry Milman, a Victorian dean of St Paul’s. He wrote dramatic poems and romantic verse dramas, as well as some of the first studies of biblical history to root Scripture in the culture of its day (he gave offence by describing Abraham as “a nomad sheikh”). In his Palm Sunday hymn, Ride on, Ride on in Majesty, he sees the Palm Sunday procession as a poignant, funeral procession ”” “in lowly pomp ride on to die”. Indeed, that is how this Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday, unfolds.

If there was an expectation among the Palm Sunday crowds that this was the beginning of a revolution in which Jesus would drive out the oppressive Roman occupiers, it was not to be. The week that begins with Palm Sunday moves inexorably through ever darker moments: the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (the garden of the pressing out of the olives), betrayal, arrest, torture, mocking, scourging and a trial that shows both religious and political leaders as utterly unconcerned with truth (as Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, asks dismissively, “what is truth?”).

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The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has announced his resignation. He is leaving to under­take a new global ministry in places where the Church is under pressure and Christians are in a minority. The Archbishop of Canter­bury has described his move as “a courageous initiative and a timely one”.

The news, which was announced in a statement on Saturday, appears to have come as a complete surprise to many.

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The outgoing Bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev Graham Dow, delivers the broadside at the non-believers in the April issue of his diocesan news. And as he sounds the triumphant note about the truth of Christianity, he asserts that over half a century of living “in touch with Jesus” has brought him “untold joy”. Bishop Dow, who will be 67 in July, makes the declaration in an article headed “Get A Life! – the Atheists’ Way or the Christian Way?”

He declares: “The notion that science has disproved – or will one daydisprove – the existence of God is one of the great lies of our generation.

“Even if it is remotely possible that the perfect conditions on earth for human existence could have happened by sheer statistical luck – in a system with many universes and with billions of billions of planets – there is no sign of any scientific explanation as to why the raw materials of the universe existed at all.”

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Details of Bishop Nazir Ali’s new work have not been finalized, the diocese noted, leading to speculation that the 59 year old bishop might be preparing for another role in the Anglican Communion in light of his high profile stance within the conservative wing of the church.

However, the General Secretary of the Church of Pakistan, Humphrey Peters tells The Church of England Newspaper the news of the resignation came as a surprise. “So far we have no idea nor have we heard anything from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali. But, in case he feels like working for Church in Pakistan in these most critical times, the Church will be more than happy to welcome him.”

A spokesman for the Gafcon movement, stated while its leaders were generally aware of Dr. Nazir Ali’s wish to move on, they had no specific knowledge about his Saturday announcement.

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Whatever your views about Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, he is hard to ignore. After his announcement this weekend that he is to retire early, the Church of England will be the poorer for it. The inference is that he felt stifled and decided that he could do more worthwhile work elsewhere, mostly outside Britain. Sadly, he is probably right.

Born in Karachi to parents who converted to Christianity from Islam, the first non-white diocesan bishop in Britain emerged as an outspoken critic of multiculturalism. Nobody, given his background and race, was better placed to do so. More than his Anglican colleagues, he knew about fighting for your faith. His criticisms were well made. Immigrants, he said, needed to do more to integrate into British life. He warned last year that Islamic extremism had turned “already separate communities into ”˜no-go’ areas”. For this he received death threats and required police protection.

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Dr Michael Nazir-Ali is only 59 and could have stayed for another decade in his post, one of the most senior in the Church, but has chosen instead to devote the rest of his career to working in communities where Christians are in a minority.

While this is likely to see him involved in the Middle East and Pakistan, the bishop revealed that he also plans to work with Muslim converts to Christianity in Britain.

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So I give three cheers to the idea of removing the priority of male succession.

What about marrying a Catholic? Here the situation is a bit like admission to Holy Communion. The Church of England welcomes Roman Catholic’s to its altar rails, but the Roman Catholic Church does not reciprocate and will not let married couples kneel together to receive the sacrament if one is a non-catholic.

I would welcome an heir to the throne marrying a Roman Catholic – it is much more important that a royal couple is united in its Christian faith than what denomination the spouse is from.

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One of the Church of England’s most outspoken bishops has announced that he is to resign a decade early to devote the rest of his life to work with Christians in Islamic areas.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church’s only Asian bishop, who is just 59 and could have stayed at Rochester until his 70th birthday, intends to use his expertise as an Islamic scholar to work in Pakistan where he was born and in the Middle East to build bridges between Christians and Muslims.

A conservative evangelical, he will step down in September after nearly 15 years in the diocese.

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I have already noted the threats, that are well-known to exist, to the future of the Anglican Communion. From a careful reading of the Communiqué following the recent meeting in Alexandria of the Primates of the Communion, and on the basis of what some of them have written and said since, it would be foolishly optimistic to imagine that the existing difficulties were on the point of being overcome. One commentator seems to me to have summed up the situation well when he wrote: “(the communiqué) seemed to mark the acceptance, finally, of the unbridgeability of the Communion’s divide over sexuality and biblical authority, while leaving the outworking of this conclusion still undetermined.”

It may well be the case that only a proportion even of ‘active’ members of the Church of England are much concerned about the Anglican Communion. But even those less concerned would, I think, be faced with questions both within their churches, and from their friends and in the Media, if the Communion were explicitly, by decisions of responsible bodies, to divide. This too would suggest that things were not as they had been ”“ and the more so, if there came (as I think that there would quickly come) pressures upon the General Synod, or upon individual Dioceses, to make choices between the (by then) divided parts of the Anglican Communion.

Many fewer people, I think, are aware of the growing head of steam, in the ‘Global South’ and more accurately among the ‘GAFCON’ elements of the Communion, for a early Review of the processes for the appointment, and of the role, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, on account of the post-holder’s responsibilities as the senior Primate of the Anglican Communion, and as one (arguably, and certainly at present, the most significant and effective) of its four ‘Instruments of Communion’. Specifically, should these roles and responsibilities in and for the contemporary Anglican Communion be located in the See of Canterbury, whose occupant is an appointee of the British Crown (and to date a Briton though today not an Englishman), rather than in an (Arch)bishop elected, like every other Primate, by his peers.

Here are complex questions (explored already in the Hurd Commission’s Review of the See of Canterbury published in 2001): of the relationships of the Provinces of the Communion, and so of Anglicanism itself, to the See, and to the Cathedral, of Canterbury; of the future of the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury (and so of other English Bishops) by the Crown; and of the possibility of an Archbishop of Canterbury who was not British ”“ but could such a person fulfil the roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of England and of the Church of England? (Could we imagine an English bishop today as Archbishop of Nigeria, or of Australia?) These questions have the potential to cause a good deal of unsettled-ness in the Church of England, and to divert a good deal of energy, if the Global South presses them as I believe that it will.

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The Bishop of Manchester has been forced to take a vow of email silence after his computer was crippled by a virus.

The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch has been unable to send or receive messages for nearly 10 days, it has emerged.

And a `significant’ number of the 6,000 emails he thought he had sent during the past 10 months probably never found their mark, a Church of England spokesman admitted.

Computer experts are now frantically trying to restore his computer, which was hit by the virus on March 3.

Read it all.