Exodus of the Gummerites!

C of E loses responsibility for several thousand "fundamentalists."

Medawar doubts that much sleep will be lost in either Canterbury or York.

The C of E is at its best when expressing a form of quiet, undogmatic faith that has a great deal of support from the Bible, but which singularly fails to feed the cravings of power-worshippers. Those who cannot see or feel that quiet faith and its genuine power, which cannot be so easily abused as the hierarchical and purely political power structure of the Roman Church, will always wander off, eventually. Rome has many, many more divisions than Stalin ever had, and also many rulers -and terrorists- under its mantle. The C of E often appears only to have cakes and flower-festivals, but then, Angels have appeared and baked cakes to sustain prophets in the desert, and "Solomon, in all his splendour, was not robed as one of these." Let John Selwyn Gummer and Antony Charles Lynton Blair hie off to Rome if they must, but they are following and seeking something purely political -and in doing so, they demonstrate that they have missed the point of God, most utterly.

Of course, the C of E could usefully adopt the priesthood of all the believers, and probably one day it will be able to, once all those who need a druid-replacement at the altar have thrown their kneelers out of the pram in a huff.