Staggeringly Relevant

It appears that the ban on female bishops remains fully in accord with the will of God. The Church of England's house of laity has rejected a motion of no confidence in its head, Dr Philip Giddings, by a somewhat larger margin than it rejected the notion of women holding episcopal authority last November. Giddings is the convenor of the Anglican Mainstream network, which was founded to oppose the appointment of Jeffrey John as bishop of Reading; the group's objections duly swayed the invertebrate Rowan Williams to make haste and sack his appointee, as doubtless Christ himself would have done. At the debate over female bishops, Giddings threw his weight behind the conservative faction, proclaiming that the church "can ill-afford to alienate those who are opposed on grounds which have a long and honourable tradition within our own church and the church more widely". The use of long and honourable as virtual synonyms is, of course, traditional for conservatives in the church as in society more widely; while the implication that the church is better off keeping its bigots and alienating those who think women are fully-paid-up members of the human race was apparently prompted solely by the Christian urge to be fair and courteous to all sides.

Giddings responded to today's vote by dropping a few coals on his enemies' heads, calling for one of those convenient Blairite lines to be drawn under the matter and expressing the hope that, what with a hundred and fifty members having braved the snow to attend, the temperature might now be lowered. Whether he would have expressed similar hopes in the event of a vote in favour of female bishops, or whether he would have joined Lord Carey of Blathering-in-the-Dotage and his ilk in their overheated mire of scaremongering fatuity, is known only to Dr Giddings and the Deity who arranged it all.