The Daftest of Decisions

News reached me via the jungle telegraph that James Barry will no longer be the Unitarians' webmaker. I might be talking out of turn here, lacking some information, but only because I can't think of anything more bonkers. He made a dreadful website (remember those squares) look good again, and has added all sorts of features. He also knows plenty about publicity more generally. Structures get changed 'to be more effective' and you find they end up doing the same thing. If the centre is cutting its suit numbers according to what cloth is available, the one thing you don't do is shut down the shop window. You keep your marketing department as long as you can. This chap has brought people in through the door. No wonder people get fed up with the centre. Now tell me what in this I have got wrong.

Wild West Anglicanism (Flog the Dead Horse)

Crumb Newsletter

Knowing your Opposition and Avoiding their Arguments

by Stephen Kuhrtsey

One of the fascinating things about being in a small band of brothers is when you have to circle them wagons because you are being shot at from all sides, but then if we are right we keep shooting no matter what the defeat. If the one horse is dead, keep flogging it. It may just get up and walk, and bison may fly.

On the one side are the fundies, and on the other side the liberals, both in the same C in E here out West. The attacks on us can even be on the same day, from both ends of the valley, and it ain't always pleasant to be shot at, though we enjoy the shootin'!

But as I say to my colleagues, friends, rivals and careerists in the camp, if we is being shot at both ends, we must be right and that's one strange degree o' reassurance.

But, hey, ain't those shooting at us on one side supposed to be evangelicals? We said ourselves to that there Archsheriff, we are gonna defend your Covenant, because we dream in terms of empires and the whole spread out land, and not just the bit of it we are left on. And what those other evangelical fundies have done is give the Archsheriff no more than extremely lukewarm support, and they're just gettin' like them liberals who are always against the Archsheriff. After all, they once saw him as one of their tribe but then he came over to ours (or we came over to his, as that's where the hierarchical gold will be found).

Actually, I remember the Mayor of that small learning town Wycliffe, years back, when he said that to get to the main enemy of them liberals you gotta first shoot them liberal evangelicals, by which he meant us; though we ain't no liberals, so we should expect his lot to come down the mountain with all guns blazin' and shootin' at us.

Now the Archsheriff, he said that the Covenant would regulate Anglican chapels' affairs at the centre via a long talking-shop procedure, by which one chapel would fall in with the concerns of another chapel. In other words, if one chapel innovated some funny sentiments, then the others could slow it down by complaining to him and his instruments in office. That was a real pressure on them liberals. But at the same time, the Archsheriff said there was no punishment, punitiveness, and the offendin' chapel could carry on if it really wanted to, but that was no good for them other fundies who wanted to have some real sanctions and not some kind of a talking-shop as they were saying.

So that puzzles me. I mean no one I know on either side has yet been able to say how 'a centralising strait jacket that will impair freedom and innovation' can simultaneously be 'a toothless proposal designed to produce constant dialogue and no action'. The Covenant cannot be both but whilst many liberals have presented it as the former, many conservative evangelicals have presented it as the latter. Gee up.

Of course it might have something to do with how the Archsheriff and his officials presents his case, but outa loyalty I would never say such a thing.

If you stand in the middle of the new main street in the main town, don't be surprised if the stage coach going one way hits you followed by the posse racing by in the other direction.

Now that there retired Deputy Sheriff - the man who was on the inside track of the Archsheriff and consistently said about but failed to predict what was coming along: well he gives us an insight what it's all about. Yeah did.

From up there in the Canadian forests, where he now lives among a group of remote writers, and still writin' an' sellin' them books, our own New Testament Wrong says both liberals and fundies have treated the Ephesian and Colossian Indians' myths the same. The liberals say they are not myths originating with Big Chief Paul, so treat them with sceptics' sauce, but the fundies who'd never say that about their origins still prefered the myths of the Romans and Galatian Indians. Ex-Deputy Sheriff NewT says we should take account of all of their recreation stories and you can't neglect them of Ephesian and Colossian Injuns when it comes to making up the magic book.

And we who circle our wagons: we don't neglect them stories because that ex-Deputy Sheriff is one of ours. But he's gone away now and we can only read his words when up for sale. Yup. The old Deputy Sheriff who once said "Hang them liberals way out West" and also "But buy my books before we noose you" has gone rather quiet on us.

We think these liberals are confederates and nothing more, whereas we support the building of a new federal government with a strong centre and subsidiarity on just cultural and lesser things. Yup, so, though we'd avoid a Civil War (despite the fact we've got one!). And regardless of all sorts of statements from them fundies, who'd put the heretics into a rigid arm lock, throw them in jail and lose the keys: the fact that they're into some form of DIY when it comes to these chapels suggests they're pretty much in the same game. They play poker with a marked pack. They'd run their own learning towns, courts, jails, sheriff offices and the lot and bring in their own sheriffs. Or at least do so to make their policies and keep control while infiltrating our chapels as much as they can. They want it both ways.

Now there is one other tribe we haven't yet mentioned, who occupy some caves now that they've been pretty much run out of town. Them Anglocats: and boy, have they got a high view of the chapels that we should bring together as one. They know all about hierarchy and we could learn a thing or two. The Archsheriff is like one of theirs, but they used to say perhaps wrongly that he only dressed up like them to confuse.

But scratch the surface and you soon realise that those caves ain't on Brokeback Mountain for nothin'. And when it comes to that sacred mountain, they'll dash any Covenant that builds up its mighty organisation on the further marginalising of them folks brought up on and in the shadow of that mountain.

In that Covenant the Archsheriff wanted to fence around the mountain. But - hang on! Did he not once write some of his best stories and sing his best songs around the camp fire on that very mountain himself? Well, maybe, but he's our leader in that since he got the Badge he's been singing from a different tune book. It might not be his tune book but he's not strayed back to his own. He thought we could put fences up, and in terms of our chapels and their attenders, just have a few discreet gateways and all sorts of delaying checkpoints. We don't mind them Brokebackers coming in the chapels so long as they don't do anything we wouldn't do. After all, we don't want to get to a point where stagecoaches go between towns carrying rude messages about them Brokebackers under the luggage racks.

But scratch one of those Anglocats and you soon find he first defends the homeland of the sacred mountain. In the past they have let all sorts of restrictions get through, keeping their nods and winks, but suddenly they were saying no to the new fences and gateways.

But, no, they're not shootin', not unless they is with them liberals already.

We suspect there were some Anglocats who, even with the fences, would still have kept the Brokeback sacredness in the dark, deep in the caves, but these folk are now either well scattered, or deep in the caves well out of sight, or in other cat caves not run on Anglo lines anymore.

Well what a can o' beans this is. So why not have loads of beans in all them varieties? Instead of the regulation cooking on the campfire, from regulation chefs, why not have anyone cook them or even eat them cold? Ask them Anglocats and they'd say "No, they must be warmed properly and by the sacred chef." Yeah did.

It's all one almighty heck of a diddly ddoing mess. So, am a still sayin', if we is goin' to have them chapels, we all ought still to do it properly and if we do it orderly then one sheriff is pretty much like another under the Archsheriff.

Yup we're being shot at from this side and that side, and there ain't many of us left alive - heck, one of our own assisting sheriffs works under another town sheriff who's been shootin' at us long and hard.

But despite that we are still gonna flog that dead horse. Over the vast miles and oceans, others are rumoured to be like us and we seek them out for comfort - just like those evangelical fundies sought out their own internationally for support. But it's our horse that's dead, not theirs, nor the liberals' nags. Dead ours may be, but we'll flog it.

Hey, the Archsheriff retires soon so who knows the future. If that guy in the Liverpool office - he was one of ours once - gets the job we'll then all have to change our tune if we want to get on. But he's had his own troubles. We pray it'll be another one of our own, and we will try and bring the Covenant back again and again. But, of course, we'll keep them wagons circled if we do.

Never Mind April Fool - Just Dream

Perhaps it's an absence of alternative activities, but my dream world seems to be getting ever more vivid and even disturbing. I rarely dream with a religious theme, but I did on Wednesday morning.

Just to say I have a high opinion of the Unitarians' Nightingale Centre; I am aware of the barn not far off that is (or was) basic accommodation, and there is the Derbyshire countryside in that area, sort of plateau before the Peak District's more dramatic countryside, and it is all well green.

I'm also aware of the south west Wales 'Black Spot' location of Unitarian chapels in Wales, though I have never seen any directly.

This dream was located in mid-Wales, and not quite Black Spot country, and yet it looked more like Derbyshire, though the key was the railway line, a single track one that looped around the locality.

So I was with a group of Unitarians on a long walk up a path that was a south to north Wales path. Off it we went to these large rectangular unfinished buildings, or ruined (I think unfinished), in that inside they had lots of square windows but no glass, and grass growing where there should be a floor. There seemed to be a roof. And I recall the wind coming in and that if this was a worship place it wasn't very pleasant. It was probably used ad hoc. And then further up after walking there was another building just like it that this group visited. Someone was well informed. Again it was unfinished. They indicated a lack of use and lack of money.

The railway line that was far off to the south actually curled around, and a train coming north went right past this chapel so that it was up above at one wall (so no roof there).

At this point my camera, rather than being lost, had changed and become smaller - still digital - but as it had changed I couldn't work it. I also started to feel the cold, and realised I hadn't dressed for all weathers, and I would have no protection. I was just going to have to follow the rest and walk back.

So what was that all about, then? I am one for analysing dreams and usually there is an obvious point regarding me.

On the one hand it looks like a story about being attached and putting effort into a defunct religious movement visiting its incomplete relics and half-used places. It obviously carries some sort of 'no future in this' message. But actually I think it is more about me, and having no holidays for a long time now, and losing contact with places, and being in something of a dead end - the camera being unusable is a key, which has been used to picture my decrepid legs. It may be that the defunct half-finished half-used places around this religion are the only attachment and interest I now have, and that all others have gone (simply because I cannot afford them - one lives to the extent of the money available).

Incidentally the dream before this involved being in a back yard like where I lived as a child, and a back door and the problem of shoving a horse up and over an oven that was in the way of the back door, and that if the horse went high enough through the gap it would end up next door where it needed to be. My pub friends said I'd been watching Laurel and Hardy, but I hadn't except for a recent encounter with The Tale of the Lonesome Pine and Way out West.

Leading Church in England Easter Messages

Easter Sermon by Archbishop Rowan Tree
Clapham Cathedral, Sunday 8th April 2012

Note: the congregation is noisy and starts to heckle.

Let's see if I can express myself. You're walking along and the secular gangs go 'la la la' against us, we Christians, but we walk on further: their high point or is it low point has perhaps passed and if only we would have a good debate and less publicity and hysterics. But I like Richard Darwins and the debates I've had with him. Yes, the dark alley is past and there's a bit more visibility or light and, indeed, the crowds aren't exactly filling the churches but no longer do we get the blame...

Pardon? What am I going on about? I'll get there. I was trying to set the scene but we have Sandles and Skidlesticks valuing the religious input to economics, and then Alan de la Bottom and his Religion for Atheists who thinks he knows the best bits of religion - not those embarrassing beliefs that I am about to address. It's not that...

What? No, I am not saying the beliefs are embarrassing. I am being ironic, I hope, in my run-in to make a point. If I may continue. It's not the crowds returning to church but a change in how serious and liberal-minded people are discussing faith.

Sorry? Well 'liberal-minded' is not necessarily necessary to be serious. It's a turn of phrase, I think. I suppose I was liberal-minded once, and may be again. We believers are not "brainless" any more - OK they never quite said that; but after all I have been defending the religion, and we are not "oppressive"...

What? Have I really been oppressive while Archbishop of All England? Tut tut. Rather I have been - we are - an ally against the insane limiting nature of current economic life.

It may be that the young don't know there is a Lord's Prayer or can't say it, but even if they are deeply deeply unlikely to cross the threshold of a church, they do agree with my chosen authors that... Yes I know they'll not have heard of them. The schoolchildren will know there is something about us and now is not the time for schools to stop doing what we would be doing if they didn't - that is teaching RE. There are a few RE teachers that treat the subject seriously rather than the lesson giving the pupils of this country an hour off with a bit of colouring in. But I could wander off at this point. I have to do fifteen minutes. Yes I am sure but it's a lot less than my predecessors did.

So no longer does the alleyway go on and on, and perhaps the aesthetic of Easter has a chance. But that's not good enough, really, is it, because up and down the land people are asking, or dodging, the question, is it really true. Maybe - all right - they are not and have something else to do. The clergy then, up and down the country. They are asking. Yes we are a dogmatic religion and we must face up to those embarrassing questions.

So many liberals want to wriggle out of this. So let's list what is not the case. You'll like this.

The story we are told isn't that the message of Jesus lives on; the story we are told is not that the empty tomb is a piece of the imagination to inspire; the story we are told is not that Jesus survived death, but the story we are told is like a metaphor that the wall became a window - to borrow from Robert Knox - that we see behind all these things that people say the story is. In other words, it is that God willed and did something, through the fabric of things, opening things out, that the women and men witnessed on that one day, so that Jesus could be with us and we be with Jesus living together that God has done and reconciles love between us.

What do you mean you are lost? Doesn't this make sense? I'm saying that this reconciling love might be what attracts these more liberal-minded commentators now, even if Alan de la Bottom was making more of an aesthetic and cultural argument, or John Rutting composes for cultural reasons because he doesn't believe either, or that German chap Reverend Professor Der Mutt who opposed me on the Covenant and who said we have here a cult of the individual.

You want me to spit it out? It's hardly the relevant expression, is it. Say it simply? Humm. Well, that which is no longer toxic, that vision to attract if a little, is so only because we are told God raised Jesus. There you are, I said it.

We don't have a brilliant set of story writers, dramatists, playwrights - I mean, you could not get the staff. Not from the disciples available, that bunch of mediocre mistake makers. Not compared with the boss.

What do you mean is it true? Aren't you satisfied? Of course it is, but I can't give some sort of knock-down scientific proof. It is how it works through the community and through us, by living it. No I am not compromising again. No, I am not dodging. I'm not jogging round the embarrassing bits again. We say to the cultured not quite despisers, these days, you have to stop just observing and live it, live in it.

See, if God exists and is active, if his will raised Jesus from the dead, then we the population do what we can but the future isn't only about our efforts. Well, I'm saying 'if' not because I doubt it, but as a means to affirm it aren't I. I've never been heckled so much in all my life. No I haven't stepped back from affirming it. I am saying we have full responsibility about our efforts too. No, I said it isn't only about our efforts, but Pascal says we can't sleep while Jesus is in pain. Well he is still in pain even if raised because there is still suffering. What? What - there shouldn't be any? Well we might be tempted to make some futile gesture, but that's no good, or become consumed with guilt that we haven't acted enough and that's no good. Be like that and it'll make us unattractive again. Yes, I know it is in our liturgy, what we have left undone and done a futile gesture. What have you lot been eating this morning?

Think of how we are trapped by irreconcilables, like the Jews should have Israel given what happened to them but they should stop duffing up the Palestinians as false security and both sides should be peaceful. What do you mean you want me to stick to whether I believe it or not?

I'm talking about a God who acts, aren't I, to support reconcilers who also believe in a God that acts. Do they believe in a God who acts, with empathy for one side and the other? That's the question you should be asking, not if I do. That's just being trivial.

In fact, in the end, it is not about a God who endorses your own version of reality. So the cultural not quite despisers might be right. God is not just on our side. And you extend the hand to the other in situations of human conflict.

I'm not wriggling. What I'm trying to say - I know that I am always trying to say - is that believing what we are told that God did raise Jesus is no excuse for hanging back for God to also do something about conflict. That would be just trivial. Or maybe not. Perhaps God has got his priorities wrong. Perhaps he is busy and we don't see it.

I mean we believe this God acts as a kind of foundational thing, or I seem to need to do - I mean deism is so unsatisfactory - so to give us space in a world where God creates a future. Because if God didn't give us a future we'd only have a future. But resurrection is like a space-maker with a kind of spontaneity making space, producing that window. So whilst some are warming to religion a bit, and has social value at last, with less of the Richard Darwins, we are doing the embarrassing part and going beyond saying it is nice but actually believing in God doing things even when we have run out of puff, I think you'd call it down there.

You can stop heckling now because the window has become a wall again. Except I suppose I am saying that shouldn't happen.

Does this happen in most cathedrals?

Meanwhile, John Sendmehome wrote a column in The Stunner, much against continuing advice.

I wanna tell you a story. Back in the USSR in early Commie days this Nilolai Bukharin went to Kiev to ridicule the beliefs that today the Archbishop of England admits are embarrassing. But as Bukky did this, and did a demo job, this priest knew a trick or two for the questions and said, CHRISTOS ANESTE- EK NEKRO-N. That wasn't some code words for a space ship, or writing for your next tattoo, but an ancient greeting of 'Christ is risen from the dead' and the whole crowd did what they used to do and rose like Cliff Richard crashing and singing "He is risen indeed." Wow.

Bukky didn't realise that these embarrassing bits are not an ideology to argue about, but a liturgy for repetition. They still had the habit.

You won't find that response in the grave of past experience, ha ha, or what you reckon is so, but in surprises and new life like a Jack in the Box. Now you and me, like, we might be crying, but would we recognise Jesus if he turned up with a hanky to dry our eyes? Like a chap on the London Underground, he can break through barriers, like put up by the fightened disciples. By the way, do not dodge fares. Or he might come for a walk alongside us but would we know who we were walking with? I'm not saying you should walk with strangers.

But Jesus is the one who created all the good things you like to buy in the shops. He is the big factory man. Ha ha, I really mean he's the nice man behind all the good feelings you have for one another, and your hopes and dreams (and if you're on the dole) - and that's how you recognise him because he is there and Rowan Tree would refer to this as metaphor and say it is also real, that the story of our lives is as real as it gets. I'll miss him.

Let me reassure my mate Rowan, before he goes. Kids in school do know about the crucifixion and resurrection, because I asked them in Brum a long time ago. A lad told me that Jesus in his back garden said they are going to kill him but added "Oy you sleepy lot don't eat my easter eggs because I'll be back in less than three days." Wow. Brill.

Now easter is in the egg. Take a real boiled egg for breakfast. When you slice the top of the chucky egg off with a knife, doesn't that remind you of the door to the tomb being rolled away? Wow! When you put your bread strip soldiers in the runny yellow bit, isn't that like the Roman soldiers on guard getting a bit messy? And where did Jesus go? I like my chucky eggs for breakfast. And when I go to work on an egg, that's like resurrection as if I have a new body. Wow, just thinking about it.

But if you have a chocolate one, buy it fair trade to help others, and remember children that are missing and can't be given an easter egg. But whatever you do, don't forget to buy the hope you can read about in your super, soaraway Stunner ever day, seven days a week. Wow!

Easter in a Corner of Unitarian Land

I am not an Easter believer. That is to say, whilst I like the optimism that says there'll be a new dawn after all your struggles, I don't think it is centred, or caused, in the Easter story. Rather the Easter story reflects the bumpy nature of difficult and released from the difficult nature of living that is just a fact of chaotic life. It's the old one of the seed dies and a plant emerges.

A new chap at our church, the third new face in recent weeks, has responded to a universalist aspect of a recent advert, and he's very much of the 'all religions point in the same direction' school, with a background of astrology and belief patterns that Christianity is but one example. After two weeks he thinks Unitarians are one-by-one factions - we don't see the great big picture. I say there is no way around the diversity issue if you are going to argue, whereas there are side effects of, say, having a more Baha'i emphasis on uniformity. But he has me a subject here to tackle in my service on the 29th. Today, though, was Easter Sunday.

Our preacher from Wakefield said how his home base would be ignoring the day, but he would not, nor would he do the "cop out" of some Unitarians, which is just to talk about how spring is here again and there is new life emerging. And he said that as a strong supporter of the Pagan Federation. We had some of the green stuff but mainly a focus on the claims that Christians make. I agree with this: we should tackle the claims.

First he said that no Jesus history is without the spin of the believers who wrote the gospels from two generations later. The preacher's message seemed to be that the empty tomb stories were variable, but had credibility because the evidence was provided by women, and if you were to concoct that story for the believers then you'd have men at the tomb and of higher status. Trouble is, he said, we don't know what happened. As for Paul's either all or nothing statement, that's tough on Paul and the rest - rather, the teachings are what live on, just as our contributions to life will live on in a much smaller way.

To me, this is incomplete, and something of a cop out itself! I'm afraid that the demands of the new attender in the conversation took us all off in one direction of unity in diversity rather than a critical examination of the sermon's stance. I know one member said something first but I didn't catch it as I came from the music producing corner a little after folks had gathered.

My view is that it is precisely the use of women that allows the answer to the question of why early Christians didn't visit a tomb and had no interest in visiting a tomb. Indeed, of course, the first of the resurrected implies a reanimated regenerated body and the new Chritian community believed in some had received a vision and then Jesus had ascended and thus there would be no more apparently regular appearances. Those in authority were now set. The point is that the first tomb story, that in Mark, has women as the evidence providers AND it says they were told not to tell anyone. That's the point: why the tomb was only a later tradition affirming materiality. Mark himself leaves the resurrection open to stark mystery. After that comes embellishment in the other gospels, and the fact that all mention a tomb emptied is neither here nor there. But the emphasis in Paul (who does not mention a tomb), and is by far the earliest writing, is on appearances, as indeed in later gospels; and these appearances in total are to do with the future, authority, ritual and getting the message right (when they 'see' Jesus).

Paul also is parading resurrection as a salvation theology, which is a new twist on the expectations, and this is the all or nothing. The context is the end times and the awaited resurrection of all, which will get going when the first of the resurrected is transformed into the messianic and returned complete Son of Man, now God's only son - a time also when the titles of Jesus are being escalated, and when quickly some form of binitarianism is being developed (among believing Jews as well as Gentiles). Newer scholarship emphasises speed of change.

Religions have charismatic periods at their renewing, emerging, forward looking stages before things fail to happen and tradition starts to take over. This two generations aspect of the gospels is a bit misleading, as the new stories and escalating responses were bubbling up and out rapidly amongst the first believers. I'd also suggest that the Greek influence (mentioned in the service without clarity) is there in the Septuagint and immediately is involved in the framing and content of the stories of the gospels: that if Jesus spoke the rough Greek as well as Aramaic (I'd argue that he did), as other Jews did, then the Greek influence in amongst the Jews is ready for input too, never mind among the Gentiles looking for a monotheism beyond the Law.

The point is that all this is a cultural view of religious formation. What is 'all or nothing' is that once Jesus is dead then he is either the Jesus-followers' Messiah to come or he is nothing. There was immediately a family firm to protect his legacy. There was also a critical cultural breakout that therefore escaped the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. There were many Jesuses and last days movements and preachers at the time; it's just that they didn't break out. The disciples, we are told, got out of the way of the death scene, and the suffering servant will have done his task to the bitter end. They had to deal with the extent of the service and sacrifice, and had to wait for the response of God.

Now you can believe this is supernaturally driven, with a Godly hand on the tiller of history, or it is purely cultural. Frankly, a Godly hand on the tiller is subject to the same criticisms as why such a hand on the tiller didn't occur at other times in our destructive human history when needed. Indeed, I'd say that God was as absent in the crucifixion event as has been in any other event of our evolved lives. That's because he doesn't exist. But it is anyway unnecessary to have this additional supernatural explanation because these folks believed in all sorts of magical and supernatural things, and lived in times of intense stress and persecution and drove the thing themselves.

There is a Unitarian view that sort of says Jesus's beliefs were so remarkable and powerful that these motivated the disciples to teach them on, once met by the spirit (either understood realistically or metaphorically). I don't go by this at all. He had reverse ethical ideas about the Kingdom, which is what interests us, as an idealism, now, but the motivation, the engine, is the last days, the reality soon coming. He could have believed all sorts of things. The reason we get any of this is the proto-orthodox material after Paul, for which Unitarianism is a Reformation revision. Unitarianism is not a 'religion of Jesus' coming after and alongside a 'religion about Jesus'; it is as much about Jesus as the rest. Yes, the ethics matter, but the ethics of Islam are rather mixed (communitarian but fierce to enemies) and many find that an attractive package of submission and power.

My own view is a comparative uninterest in Jesus, after all. The attractive ethics stand alone, and yes have to be lived. But as a cultural phenomenon it stands with others. I think the Buddhist path is a more direct one. There are newer more inclusive paths than expressed by Jesus (who was tribal after all - he focused on the future for Jews first). So by this stance I find my spirituality in a broader canvas, and it doesn't need a quest for uniformity with others. I'll discuss with anyone. I'll take my service too.

At Southwark Farm

Peter Levite: Down in the London studio I have a number of people waiting to talk to me. It's all about the diocese of South Park.

Bishop Chestnut: South Wark is pronounced Suthurk anyway.

Peter Levite: So that was Bishop Chest...

Bishop Chestnut: Sounds like Bishop Chessnut.

Peter Levite: Well what you sound like is what people there are saying. The Suthurk Diocesan Evangelical Unification Group held a meeting because they say they are being ignored. Is that right Stephen Kuhrtsey? Why don't you stop complaining and curtsy to your bishop?

Stephen Kuhrtsey: The point is that in most dioceses Evangelicals are doing well, and might even be the majority. Here we are not doing so well, but we have the concentration of numbers who put their hands into their pockets.

Peter Levite: What do they do with their hands in their pockets? Are they frustrated?

Stephen Kuhrtsey: No, they take them out again with money, and deposit the money. So it is about time the purse started pulling the strings.

Chris Skilbeck: You might be forgetting the liberal Catholics.

Peter Levite: Chris Skilbeck, Archdeacon. You met these evangelicals.

Bishop Chestnut: I applaud the fact that we have these meetings where everyone pulls together.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: They keep promoting revisionists on all sorts of matters, including those promotions of so many who are working to revise the Church's traditional position on sexuality.

Bishop Chestnut: I am so grateful so many people turned up and showed their desire to pull together.

Annie Sugden: Aye lad but down in't farm tha calls the Church...

Peter Levite: Annie Sugden, continue.

Annie Sugden: ...lahk in Beckindale, tha lambs are supposed t'be shepherded bah thems we approve of, lahk, and tha's not givin them raht shepherds fair crack o'twhip, and if tha's not then we'll afta look abroad for us owen.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: Just let me list the names of those promoted. There's the Bishop of Croydon, Jonathan Shoes; the Bishop of Woolwich, Dr Michael Ipcressfile; the Dean of Southwark, the Very Revd Andrew None; the acting Arch­deacon of Southwark, Canon Dianna Gurgurgur-Gwanville; the Sub-Dean, Canon Bruce Chicken-Nugget; and the Diocesan Director of Ordinands, Canon Philippians Marlowe. They are all liberals.

Chris Skilbeck: You might be forgetting the liberal Catholics.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: They're liberals: like a horse is a horse whatever its breed, but then the question is: 'What is a Zebra?' When is a bunch of grapes a bag of marbles?

Peter Levite: Your lot voted against the Covenant! Heftily!

Stephen Kuhrtsey: This was a sad time for the diocese. We fail to see the higher level issues with all these localistic liberals and their obsession with Henry VIII. Our 10 clergy for, if 27 against, our 21 laity for, if 32 against, was nevertheless a moral victory for the Covenant, for its vision international, and no bishop here opposed it.

Peter Levite: You like the diocesan bishops when it suits you, then.

Annie Sugden: Nay lad.

Peter Levite: Are you really Annie Sugden, or is this a disguise? Can't get one past me, you know.

Bishop Chestnut: We try to see the higher level issues in place as well as keeping the bishops together. I am here for everyone: a focus of unity. But I cannot be a focus of unity if people start organising their own networks of bishops, colleges, fellowships, ministers and churches.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: Exactly bishop: so when we speak why don't you listen? Don't you recognise the inevitabilites of Church geography? We are supposed to like our bishops, but I have to say, bishop, that after a good hour of people making their points, you responded without clarity.

Bishop Chestnut: How to maintain unity. Humm. As I say we try to keep the bishops together and a lead has been indicated in how not necessarily to undermine the explanations of unclarity as indeed as not exactly unsuggested by the retiring Archbishop.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: In that meeting your points were general and rather vague in your hopes for the diocese.

Bishop Chestnut: I am so grateful so many people showed their desire to pull together.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: So you are not necessarily capable of under­standing Evangelical concerns.

Bishop Chestnut: Is that not necessarily capable or not necessarily incapable?

Stephen Kuhrtsey: It is not necessarily your fault; you seem to have very few people around to help you with this. So being kind and drippy, I'd blame the others. If you promoted an evangelical, like me, you might have someone who not necessarily fails to understand. But let me be less drippy. You couldn't have done more to encourage separatist movements in the diocese. It is your fault. Recognise how the glaciers are coming down the hillside.

Annie Sugden: We thinks we'll afta look fawwad to gettin' mower ordinations by ower owen bishops from t'other pastures, tha knows. Tha's t'new Fellowship o' Confessing Anglicans to organise mower and ta get tha moneys going into ower pockets lahk for us own colleges 'n' ministries.

Chris Skilbeck: Let's be clear. Out of the 25 churches that paid a hundred grand each year 11 were Evangelical, paying £1.9 million, and 14 were liberal Catholic, dishing up £2.6 million.

Stephen Kuhrtsey: That's as maybe. But what we don't want is the likes of Andrew None preaching on the word "inclusive" when what we want is to promote a much narrower biblical gospel that puts to the front what people do round the back and should not. That's the issue and if we don't promote more people like me then you'll end up having more Annie Sugdens or whatever he is called.

Peter Levite: Thank you all. Where are you George Hudson?

George Hudson: I'm at a pub opposite Kings Cross about to go to Southwark. I don't think I'll bother now. It's getting colder and wetter with these Cumulo Evangelico clouds gathering.

Is This the Political Goodbye?

I am quite open about my voting record. To my eternal shame I voted Conservative in 1979. As a student of Economics and dismissive of some Marxist sociologists in particular I was a thoroughgoing all round liberal. I was an Economic Liberal, and the Conservatives had become Economic Liberals. I didn't last long. The analysis soon shifted, that closing down inefficient plant and equipment did not mean opening efficient plant and equipment, and it did mean dumping people at a critical period in their lives in terms of gaining employment experience. Not being attracted to the (inadequate) collectivities of the Labour Party I moved to the Liberals and the Liberal end of the Alliance with Social Democrats. For a very short period while at the University of Essex I did some actual politicking, helping to dislodge the Liberal Party from the Broad Left and attaching it to the Social Democrats. But then I left. From time to time I went along with a Unitarian friend to promote the new Liberal Democrats.

However, in 1997 in a straight fight constituency between Labour and the Conservatives I voted for Blair's Labour to shift out the Tories. But from then on I was back with the Liberal Democrats. In 2010 I faced a resurgent straight fight where the Tory might win, but I couldn't bring myself to vote Labour.

All this time the Liberal Democrats had worked on their identity problem by creating a left of centre position, and indeed it was to the left of Labour on many issues and more likely to defend the Welfare State. Gordon Brown was as much a privatiser as Tony Blair, despite a change of emphasis, and all of them regarded the unemployed as little more than rubbish to be wrung through their system of Noddy training and work, with all the talk of 'Hard Working Families'. Work shall make you free, they say.

In 2010 the Liberal Democrats seemed to have a capable leader, even if he had run out of steam at the end of the campaign. They were likely to be robbed again by the electoral system, but in the lottery of the election the failure of the Conservatives to win brought the Liberal Democrats to partial power.

What I missed in this was the ease at which the 'Orange Book' Liberal Democrats in its leadership melded in with the Tories. But over and over again this happiness of agreement has led to a betrayal of the former identity of the party built over recent decades particularly under Ashdown and Kennedy.

The first and major problem was the direct lie involved in the election over Higher Education Fees. There was the party talking about honesty (remember the adverts spreading litter?) and the Liberal Democrats would be different - honest. Yet, all the time, the policy of removing fees for university students was an easy negotiable for a coalition. It wasn't that they dumped the policy for a trebling of fees instead: but that they never intended to keep it in the first place.

The 'no top down NHS reforms' (said the Tories) has become top down reforms that have even included the Liberal Democrats. It was not in the Coalition Agreement and should not have been any part of government policy with their participation.

We've had a full on squeeze of the economy, and the so called Work Programme is all programme and no work. I should know - I've seen it. It is being run as cheaply as possible and involves nothing more than the recycling of literacy, numeracy, can you write a letter, have you done a CV, basis of activity. It is the appearance of action. Most of the so-called Apprenticeships are nothing of the sort, and indeed they are ways for the government to meet some large employers' wages bills at the unskilled end of employment in a recycling of the unemployed off the register.

The Liberal Democrats have been nothing but a wooden leg for the Conservatives. But what is really going to finish it is the proposal to be able to sweep email and online messaging without proper judicial oversight, and then we have this government's plan to introduce secret courts. This was a government that rightly tackled Labour's loss of insight into civil liberties. To me, George Galloway's win in Bradford was as much a message to the Liberal Democrats as it was to Labour - the three cheeks of the current political bottom.

It doesn't affect me, does it? Well, that's how civil liberties get chipped away. It is as if parties get into power and the bureaucrats (and the Americans) that want secrecy go to work on the governing parties. If any of this legislation goes through on either email sweeps (Clegg in favour) or secret courts (Clegg apparently against - but his position on the NHS hardly is a good marker) then any point whatsoever of voting Liberal Democrat is swept away.

I've not been a Green voter. There are aspects of the pure Green agenda that I don't like, and that I think are costly. Much of it I do think would be beneficial: like if we really could value, improve and subsidise community welfare, such as transport systems. I'm sure that Green approaches to unemployment would be far better than under the three parties seen so far. The Greens need to build a broader coalition, building a political humanism, and of course now is their chance given the betrayal by the Liberal Democrats.

A minimum position for me to vote Liberal Democrat in the future in a General Election has been the ending of Nick Clegg as leader (and not replaced by others equally orange). He ought to go early, out by the coalition's end, as Ashdown went too early (but he did go, and always better when a leader sees himself as dispensable). But if this party votes for this online sweep and secret courts then I'm afraid I'm off, and probably for good. In fact I can't understand why anyone would want to be a member of this political party the way it is going.

They party is going to be clobbered at the next election, and it deserves it. It has deceived people who gave their trust at the last election. But if it just becomes, really, no more than the Conservatives' wooden leg, full of illiberal woodworm, then it ought to be destroyed. The party is becoming a disgrace and I am looking around for alternatives.