THE whole experience finally provoked me into “coming out” in my true liberal Catholic colours. My last visit to the Winter Gardens in Blackpool was to compete in the British Open dance championships, where I came thirteenth. I never danced again.

Evangelicals look askance at superstition, ballroom dancing, unmarried motherhood and lots of the other sins of which I am guilty. So to commit myself to five days with 2,000 of their leaders in the wonderfully camp environment of the Empress Ballroom at the National Evangelical Anglican Congress took some courage. After spending the first half hour being rude to them I spent the next few days apologising. And only one bishop came up and castigated me, so it wasn’t too bad.

We arrived with the first of them and left with the last. The lights were on in Blackpool and neon angels danced outside a nightclub named Heaven and Hell. After days of news reporting in some of the most squalid, overcrowded and under-resourced conditions imaginable, it was a relief to have the time to worship and pray at the final service.

For decades evangelicals have been a minority in the Church of England, fighting against the liberal tendency that has dominated the hierarchy. The clergy of the early postwar years that gave rise to this enlightened liberal Catholicism are, however, retiring and in their stead are rising up vibrant young men — and they are nearly all men — preaching new certainties, new fundamentals, in the shape of old biblical truths.

Suddenly they are numerous and wealthy and influential. The battle over gays has shown them their might. More than a dozen of the 44 diocesan bishops in the Church of England are evangelical. It is as if the entire evangelical party is in the desert after 40 days of starvation in the sun and the Horned One is suddenly peeking up at them and tempting them with vast power. They might not be able to take over the world and rule it, but they can certainly have the Anglican Church if they want, and for many that is as good as the world. It is a shocking thing to witness, but truly biblical.

Our preacher at this service, the Bishop of Lewes, the Right Rev Wallace Benn, is president of the Church of England Evangelical Council which organised the congress. These gatherings take place about once every decade and this was the fourth.

Bishop Benn saved the congress for me, although he was less successful in saving me for it. He is “biblically sound”, as they say, but loving and not angry or extreme. “The Gospel is not to be tampered with,” he said. “It is not to be watered down by those who think that by watering it down it would be made more acceptable to today’s generation. It is not to be watered down or altered in any way. In a pluralistic and relativistic world it is always a temptation to adjust the message.”

Quoting St Paul, he said it was necessary to be relevant to contemporary generations and to find ways to communicate the Gospel. But this still did not mean that the message could be adjusted.The Church was still suffering a loss of nerve, he added. “If we are to be the gospel people God has called us to be, we need with God’s grace to recall the sense of nerve in our hearts.”

Yes, I thought, that is right. It is important not to lose one’s nerve. The Anglican Church is currently one Church. It is the Church I grew up in. In a few days the 38 primates meet at Lambeth Palace at an extraordinary meeting called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in an attempt to resolve the crisis over gays. If these people, through their unbending fundamentalism, force some new schism, I for one will never forgive them. Because forgiveness, as the Bible makes clear, is not in my gift. But I will pray to God that He might, one day.

A five-star guide

EVENT: The National Evangelical Anglican Congress, Blackpool

PREACHER: The Bishop of Lewes, the Right Rev Wallace Benn

ARCHITECTURE: Fading grandeur of the Winter Gardens, Blackpool

SERMON: On resisting temptation to adjust the message of the Gospel to suit a secular agenda

MUSIC: The usual songs led by worship bands

LITURGY: Maybe this is the problem. There doesn’t seem to be any

SPIRITUAL HIGH: True purgatory, actual evidence of the Bishop of Durham’s belief that if such a state exists, it is in this life and not the next

AFTER-SERVICE CARE: I sensed a lot of prayers being said for me