I went into my local newsagents today to buy the local paper. Gillingham is such a centre of the universe type place that we only get a paper twice a week! Anyway while I was there I noticed the following headline on the front of the Guardian,Williams twice agreed to appoint gay bishop, and so bought a copy to read.

I was both shocked and saddened by what I read. So sad with rage and exasperation, in fact, that I was close to tears after reading the story on the front page of the paper and Canon Fodder which is written in G2 (the inside bit of the Guardian for those that don’t know) by Stephen Bates, the paper’s religious correspondant. It is actually a piece from his book which is soon to be published called ‘The Church at War’.

I think that book title probably sums up why I felt so sad and exasperated by the way the church is at each others throats and, particularly, how Canon Jeffrey John and Bishop Harries has been treated by some of our own church leaders.

Some quotes from the two to give you an idea:

“Hate mail addressed to the bishop, including dog excrement, was now arriving. Eventually, Harries’ office would receive more than 3,000 communications about the appointment – two-thirds of them, in fact, supportive. Among the correspondence was a letter from the wife of John Staples, the vicar of Pangbourne, near the bishop of Reading’s residence. She wrote to John saying that, unlike his predecessors, he would not be welcome to park his car in the vicarage drive when catching the train to London from the village station.

“Yes, well,” she said indignantly, when I rang her up to ask about this, “That’s not the sort of person one wants to meet in one’s drive in the morning, is it? It was nothing personal – after he stood down, I wrote again and invited him to dinner. And, do you know, he’s never replied.”

I wonder if that lady has any idea why he may not have replied?

Even as I type I feel myself getting emotional over how we, as Christians, are able to treat other people. Surely, whether we agree with others or not, we still maintain dignity and love in the way that Jesus does with us.

I can only wonder what those outside the church think about followers of Christ when they see and hear this sort of stuff going on. In the UK there has been uproar at how people have treated each other in Big Brother – is there any difference here?

As God says (in my opinion) through The Black Eyed Peas – ‘Where is the love?’