Doing the Lambeth Limp
It's Lambeth Conference Time again - that (normally) ten yearly gathering of the Bishops of the Anglican Communion. The Conference always hits the news headlines - not merely in the Church press - but also in the secular media. Sadly, this isn't because the world gets really excited about the conference itself - indeed it will almost certainly be dismissed by much of British society as an anachronistic irrelevance - nor because the bishops say important and useful things about pressing world concerns - although to be fair, they often do - but rather because its organisers have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot and allowing the event to become newsworthy for what many will see simply as its sheer unpleasantness. In 1998, for example, people watched the TV news in disbelief as it showed footage of a certain African bishop trying to forcibly exorcise the then General Secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. All of my friends, both churched and unchurc...