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Congratulations on you elevation William.

I doubt if many on here will be queuing up to kiss your ring...

Ah yes, the Americano.

Is that not part of the problem at this conference, that the Americano is being told that he's an American't-o?

The Anglicans would need to get this thing sorted - Expresso!

William's elevation has indeed been swift - in Anglicanism 'Your Grace' is a form of address reserved for ARCHbishops.

Unless Anglican conferences are much changed from the days of my youth this is the kind of solecism which could lead to 'interesting outcomes'.

May I proffer some advice to a poor benighted Presbyterian: should some young neophyte approach you and ask to kiss your ring - extending your hand may lead to disappointment...

You’re in the Waste land William attending the burial of a dead corpse.

Even in the Waste Land Puritan...

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

Actually, within the Anglican communion, particulatly the Church of England, some bishops are entitled to the form of address 'Your Grace'. e.g., bishop of london. Bishops in the catholic church take the title Your Grace too. In Ireland, the Anglican bishop of Meath and Kildare is titled Most Rev (the usual title of an archbishop), rather than Rt Rev, and is called Your Grace.

Using terms like Reverend (one to be revered), Your Grace (as if he were the personification of God's favour), Most - well most anything at all really, and all the rest is at best hierarchical and discriminates between the body of Christ.

It's a heap of nonsense.

William, you ask the question "Can the Anglican Communion survive the de facto schism that has followed Gene Robinson's controversial ordination?" I feel though that what we are facing is not so much schism as the complete fragmentation of Anglicanism.

As a child I moved regularly between a moderately evangelical and very Reformed (that's the polite word for bigoted Prod) CoI ministry and a moderately liberal and very Anglo-Catholic CoE ministry. In both, despite the visible differences, there was a structural continuum of form and practice which meant one was always conscious that the service was Anglican and, importantly, that being Anglican was valued in both traditions.

Within the last few years, possibly in the attempt keep everybody 'on board' the requirement to adhere to a common liturgical core has been abandoned and, with it, has gone much of the commonality that bonded the disparate elements of the church together.

I am usually at a loss to know whether to laugh or cry when faced with the improvisations of the local rector but there is at least some occasional reference to the historical forms of the denomination. When I have visited modern evangelical churches, especially in England, ONLY the building told me I was in an Anglican church and I had no sense that many of them really valued their heritage or their attachment to the Communion.

I left a service at Holy Trinity Brompton recently feeling desolate and horrified at the psychological trickery built into the proceedings and the temerity of offering specific guidance, as from the Holy Spirit, to individuals after only minutes of consultation.

St Helen's Bishopsgate was a very different experience: the old Orange rector of my childhood would have thought he died and gone to heaven - only to find that God was a slightly funky kind of Brethren. The service itself was an object lesson on how sound evangelical theology can still bore the pants off you even when its proponent is wearing jeans and using Power Point.

These two churches would both consider themselves evangelical Anglican but, I suspect, have about as little in common with each other as I would have with either.

I would be happy in St Martin-in-the Fields but there are other Anglo-Catholics for whom its liberalism would be anathema and I suspect anathema is much too weak a word for what the first two churches I mentioned think about it.

With the growth of secularism and the decline of main-stream Christianity those who still attend church now tend to have opinions and actual beliefs and this, ironically, is the problem for Anglicanism. Those who think truth really matters tend not to see any value in the ambiguity which has served the church so well from its foundation until now.

Once,too, all these churches would have had common elements of worship, things a member of one would have found familiar and comfortable when visiting another and, given that worship is central to the Christian's purpose and experience, there would have been at a deep emotional level a kind of adhesive bond acting against the divisive tendencies of the disparate theologies. That is no more.

When someone who is as deeply committed an Anglican as I am tends now to leave so many churches of his own denomination not just saying "I don't really feel part of this any more" but "I want NO part of that whatsoever" then breakup of the communion is inevitable.

Augustine ( #6)

I am afraid you are wrong - no bishop in the CoI or CoE is entitled to be addressed as 'Your Grace'.

The Bishop of Meath is entitled to be styled Most Reverend but not 'Your Grace'.

The Bishop of London is entitled to the style Right Reverend and Right Honourable but not 'Your Grace'.

Check your Crockford!

However, once again, I agree with PeterM - the whole thing is nonsense - and not only nonsense pernicious nonsense.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I think #8 sums the situation up rather succinctly.

Anglicanism over recent years has become an even looser collection of traditions from quasi-Presbyterianism in Ireland to Pentecostalism in huge swathes of Africa.

Few churches these days have little sense of what Anglicanism is about - which where I'm concerned is essentially taking the best bits of Catholicism - and I think therein lies the problem, Anglicanism has always been about taking the bits of other denominations and using them for our own ends, no wonder that we are such a divided bunch.

The situation is sad, but the only real surprise is that this schism didn't happen decades ago.

On my removed post # 10 - obviously the complainant was unaware of the bishop's Christian name.

An archbishop IS a bishop ...