Bishop causes outrage...

So runs today's headline in the London Times following a statement by an evangelical bishop in the Church of England. Bishop Wallace Benn, the Bishop of Lewes, told the Reform conference of conservative Anglicans: "I'm about to use an analogy and I use it quite deliberately and carefully. And it slightly frightens me to use it but I do think it's where we're at.

"I feel very much increasingly that we're in January of 1939. We need to be aware that there is real serious warfare just round the corner. It's actually arrived in some places already. And we're in a challenging and serious situation.

"I've only two years left before retirement but the Church of England into which I was ordained is not the same Church today. Some decisions it may well make over the next five years are going to marginalise some of us and push us either to the very edge or out of the Church, and that's a very serious issue," he added.

The Bishop urged the several hundred Reform members at the conference to "wake up" their parishes to the realisation that their conservative style of ministry could soon be a thing of the past if women are ordained as bishops.

Ruth Gledhill of the Times goes on to report:

'Fears that the issue could split the church have prompted even those on the liberal wing to urge caution. In an interview with the Church of Ireland Gazette, the former Bishop of Durham, the Right Rev Tom Wright, who resigned this year to take up an academic post at the University of St. Andrews, said he had spoken at the General Synod and written in favor of women bishops. "But I don't think it's somethig that ought to be done at the cost of a mjor division in the church. I mean whatever you do in the church you are always going to leave some people behind this way or that, you can't help that," he said. Bishop Benn also gave warning that traditionalist clergy coming up for ordiantion might not be able to swear oaths of obedience to their bishops if the legislation to consecrate women passed without statutory protection for their beliefs.'