The withdrawal of Canon Jeffrey John’s nomination to be suffragan Bishop of Reading is a clear and public defeat for the liberals in the Church of England and outside it. There is no point in glossing over this. It is a defeat particularly for Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, who had defended his choice of Dr John with force and clarity. There are a lot of brave words he has to eat this morning.

It is a public defeat for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who now seems lacking in judgment, principle, and strength. He could have hung on to one or two of these virtues. Had he merely betrayed his principled beliefs about homosexual clergy, he could have stopped Dr John’s nomination without fuss before his name went forward. This would have shown judgment, of the strength of the likely opposition, and it would also have exerted the power which — as we now see — an archbishop clearly has, even if the rules don’t say so. To exert that power under duress, as he now has been forced to do, merely shows that he isn’t running the show.

He could have stood by his principled beliefs but accepted that he could not hold the Anglican Communion together on this (as no one can), and that he cannot force evangelical churches to pay for policies they find immoral. But, had he gone through with the consecration, he would have shown that the Church stands by its declared principles, which do not discriminate against celibate gays, and which maintain that homosexuality is still a matter for discussion and debate.

The withdrawal is also a humiliating defeat for those commentators — including me — who thought that the Church of England meant that stuff, and who had underestimated the power and determination of the evangelicals. Well, we all know better now.

Another loser has been the C of E as a whole. It has been very noticeable that the younger evangelicals have said nothing about this row and have avoided committing any prestige to either side. They, if not their elders, know perfectly well that the persecution of a celibate homosexual looks small-minded and unpleasant precisely because it is.

For some evangelicals, however, all this contumely and persecution in the secular, liberal press has been thoroughly worthwhile. There is a tough-minded sense in which they seem to have established that no bishop dare now cross the will of his wealthier evangelical parishes. Whether or not it is true, it will from now on be believed that the Archbishop backed down because he was threatened with the loss of 40 per cent of the Oxford diocesan income, as one letter to The Times recently estimated. This myth will be a wonderful encouragement to evangelicals to keep on giving: it is unlikely to cause a flurry of counter-giving from liberals. This will only strengthen the evangelical myth that God is rewarding “biblical” churches and punishing those who backslide. This myth is in any case powerful, and no evidence could shake it.

The question is whether this is a real victory for anyone. The evangelicals have paid a price for their victory. They have been forced into postures much more bigoted and more homophobic than most of them actually are. It cannot be an entirely pleasant experience to find yourself in bed with the Archbishop of Lagos, even metaphorically, when he makes it clear that he sees no distinction between homosexuality and bestiality.

It has clearly upset them to discover that most of their arguments seem incomprehensible to the outside world, and unjust to the wider Church. It is very hard to see where is the justice in celebrating remarriage after divorce, which Jesus explicitly denounced, while abominating homosexuality, which he nowhere mentioned.

They would like to be standing on the rock of truth; they have ended up drawing lines in the sand.

But this is perhaps the nub of the whole story. Liberals will tell you that the whole Church is built on sand and always has been. Evangelicals will say that it is, and always has been, built on the rock of truth. Neither are right. The liberals are factually true. What Christians believe has been changing as far back as records extend. St Paul expected the end of the world was imminent. The beliefs of Dr Ian Paisley would have been perfectly mainstream Anglicanism 150 years ago. The argument about gays will continue for years.

But liberals, though they are right about the facts, misunderstand the demands of faith. If you look at the sand, and see and say that it is sand, your Church may very well fail. The real faith of the evangelicals is not shown by their belief in Jesus. It is shown by their ability to look at the lines they have drawn in the sand and see in them the rock that Jesus carved.

Andrew Brown is the author of The Darwin Wars

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