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Tuesday 13 May 2008

Rowan's big, pink, fluffy rabbit

Right, whatever you do, don't think of a big, pink, fluffy rabbit. OK? That picture is definitely not in your mind? That picture of a big, pink, fluffy rabbit? OK, to business.

You see, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cant, is hosting this ten-yearly knees-up in July called the Lambeth Conference for what would have been 800 bishops. But about a quarter of them aren't attending. They're off to the "alternative" Global Anglican Future Conference in the Middle East next month instead. They on the rather frothy, insane side of the sexuality debate, and are well miffed that Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was allowed to become a bishop, in spite of being one of those.

A story in The Times says:

But he [Cant] said he hoped a "way forward" could be found in a Church facing almost inevitable schism between the liberal West and evangelical South over the issues of homosexual ordination and same-sex blessing services.


Now here's where the big, pink, fluffy rabbit comes in, the big, pink, fluffy rabbit you are not thinking of and have not once held a picture of in your mind since you started to read this article, because I asked you not to. Williams has written to bishops, according to The Times, making it "clear that he did not want the focus at Lambeth to be on the divisive issue of sexuality".

And that "divisive issue of sexuality" is going to be Rowan's rabbit. It's that old psychological trick: you tell people not to think of something that's very "seeable" in the mind's eye, and they'll see it. Can you imagine that this subject will not be the hottest, the most talked-about, the most provocative, the most divisive, the most heated topic of the entire shindig?

Surely, Rowan is not a happy bunny.

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