Canterbury

A bishop has said that conservatives within Anglicanism are using the Church as “a punching bag”. The Bishop of Washington, the Right Rev John Chane, said: “I think it’s really very dangerous when someone stands up and says, ‘I have the way and I have the truth and I know how to interpret Holy Scripture’.”

He said that the Episcopal Church had been “demonised”. He said: “I’m sick of being a punching bag as a bishop and I’m sick of my Church, my province being a punching bag”.

Bishop Chane is attending the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of 650 Anglican bishops from around the world. About 230 bishops, mainly from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, are boycotting it because of what they see as the liberal direction of the Western Church on sexuality and the Bible. More than 290 went to a recent conference in Jerusalem to set up a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans to rival the structures of the Anglican Communion.

Bishop Chane was contributing to a BBC Two documentary, Battle of the Bishops, to be broadcast on Monday.