What do I have to do to join the American Episcopal Church? It sounds great now that it has a woman, the Bishop of Nevada, the Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, in charge and an openly gay bishop in Gene Robinson. That, for me, encapsulates all the best Christian virtues of tolerance, diversity and acceptance.

A woman at the head of a Church! Who would have thought it? All we need now is a female Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Oh, and a President too, but that may not take too long either.

I may cheer, yet all the talk of schism in the Anglican Communion rests on the premise that what the Americans have been doing is unacceptable. In fact, there are plenty of us who think it is wholly admirable. It’s just that we tend to be less vocal and less harsh in our language than the conservatives.

Here is the conservative Bishop of Pittsburgh, for instance, who said this week: “For the Anglican Communion worldwide, this election reveals the continuing insensitivity and disregard of the Episcopal Church for the present dynamics of our global fellowship.”

The idea that electing a woman is provocative is highly insulting to those of us with XX chromosomes. How would men feel if we refused to accept their authority, if we begged the Archbishop of Canterbury to be our leader instead because she (yes, doesn’t that sound odd?) didn’t have a beard?

You have only to look at it that way round to see how insensitive, how deeply unChristian, such views sound.

And, yes, I know it’s not exactly the same for gays, as there is some scripture in the Old Testament (though not in Christ’s teachings) that forbids homosexuality. Yet there is some pretty rum stuff in the Old Testament, Leviticus in particular.

Are women still to be deemed “unclean”, “impure” and untouchable for seven days in every month? Are priests with a physical disability to be banned? After all, God instructed Moses to tell Aaron: “No man among your descendants for all time who has any physical defect is to come and present the food of his God. No man with a defect is to come, whether a blind man, a lame man, a man stunted or overgrown, a man deformed in foot or hand, or with misshapen brows or a film over his eye or a discharge from it, a man who has a scab or eruption or has had a testicle ruptured.”

I bet there is a bishop or two in the Anglican Communion with misshapen brows or filmy eyes.

Leviticus also prohibits tattoos, beards with the edges shaved, and garments woven with two kinds of yarn. That puts paid to polycotton vestments then. We should not eat meat that has any blood in it, or any meat from camels, rock-badgers, hares or pigs. Shellfish are out too, but locusts are fine.

It is all very well for conservatives to say that we liberals cannot pick and choose what teachings we follow from the Bible. But they do the same. How many of them abjure prawn cocktails? Do they refuse to take out a mortgage or put money on deposit because of the injunction against usury? Do they wear no clothes with added Lycra?

Many thousands of years since Leviticus was written, we live our lives very differently. We are no longer nomadic tribesmen, herding our sheep, goats and camels. What should endure from the Bible are the eternal messages, those that can apply to all societies at all times.

We no longer make burnt offerings of oxen to the Lord. But we can all still try to love our neighbours as ourselves. And that fundamental stricture should apply whether our neighbour is male or female, gay or straight — even if he has misshapen eyebrows.

No more room at the top for Prescott

One of the reasons why John Prescott says that he wants to hang on to his government title (apart, of course, from the huge salary for doing virtually nothing) is that being a mere deputy leader of the Labour Party would deny him access to presidents and prime ministers of other countries. In China and elsewhere, “I see the top people because I come from Tony Blair,” he assures us.

That is surely the best possible reason to strip him of his deputy prime ministership. For what an embarrassing ambassador he makes. According to the memoirs of Sir Christopher Meyer — our real ambassador to Washington — Prescott insisted on going in to see Al Gore, then Vice-President, to discuss foreign affairs. In the course of the conversation, he referred to the Balklands and Kovosa, and talked of Harriers bombing from 15ft.

That’s not mangled syntax: it’s inadequate briefing. And I wince to think what foreigners think of Britain when faced with a senior emissary as ignorant as that.

Pregnant Pause

What a delight it was to hear the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff argue on the Today programme yesterday for a lower abortion limit. Not because I agree with him, though I think a couple of weeks should probably be shaved off the limit now that foetuses can sometimes survive at 22 weeks. No, what cheered me up was the utter reasonableness with which he made his case.

We in Britain are so lucky not to suffer the hysteria that surrounds abortion in the US. Politicians aren’t assessed according to their views on it. Doctors who conduct abortions do not have to risk their lives to do so. Nor is abortion a party political issue as it is in America. There are proponents and opponents on all sides of the House, and it is seen purely as a matter of personal conscience.

The Catholic Church could be forgiven for sounding hardline, as it believes that abortion at any stage is wrong. The Archbishop could have treated us to a sermon on how all life is sacred, and even the morning-after pill is sinful. Instead, he merely suggested mildly that a committee of both Houses of Parliament should be set up to examine whether the current limit was a little too late in a pregnancy.

I hugely admire America’s vitality. But sometimes a dose of British moderation can be immensely soothing — especially first thing in the morning.

maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk

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