“As middle age enfolds me in its musty embrace I’m increasingly preoccupied by the deliberations of the Church of England. This could be simple atavism — go back a couple of generations and there are many ordained Anglicans in my paternal line — but it may also be because there is something genuinely epochal taking place at Lambeth Palace. For more than 400 years, since the 1689 Act of Toleration, the Church has been secure in its status as the state religion. This was only ever a political solution to Christian schism, never a doctrinal one. Indeed, as any theologian will point out, there are no real differences in belief between Protestant and Catholic, any more that there are in Islam between Sunni and Shia.”   More...