Faith Central: Jade Goody finds God

The bishop who blessed the civil wedding of Jade Goody and Jack Tweed was attacked yesterday by a leading Church of England clergyman.

The Rev Christopher Woods, Chaplain and Director of Studies in Theology at Christ's College, Cambridge said he was "really gobsmacked" to discover that the bishop who blessed the ceremony was the Most Rev Jonathan Blake, a former Church of England clergyman who now heads the Open Episcopal Church.

He called on the Church of England to speak out against Bishop Blake.

Bishop Blake, 51, a graduate of Durham university, left the Church of England in 1994 and set himself up as a "freelance vicar". In 1999 he published a book, For God's Sake Don't Go To Church, in which he warns readers of the "dangers" of attending their local parish church.

In the book he criticises some parish churches as "harbouring some paranoid individuals with narrow minds and dangerous prejudices in whose company you could perish."

The following year he was consecrated bishop in a ceremony that was licit but "irregular", following a line of apostolic succession used over the centuries by hundreds of "episcopi vagantes" or wandering bishops who for a variety of reasons defected from mainstream denominations. He successfully sued a newspaper that described him as a "self-styled bishop".

In 2003 he himself took part in the episcopal consecration of the radical Roman Catholic theologian Dr Elizabeth Stuart.

On his website he writes: "As an On Call Bishop, Bishop Jonathan has amber beacons and reflective chevrons fitted to his car. The vehicle's livery details his ministry. Bishop Jonathan is available to anyone in a crisis ...and seeks to offer whatever help he can whenever he can and if ever he discovers anyone in need."

Earlier this month he was arrested, held for a day and then released on bail after he put his children on top of the roof of his house in Welling, south-east London and photographed them as part of a school project for national book week. All charges were subsequently dropped.

The Church of England made no official comment about the ceremony.

But Mr Woods, who has been at Christ's since 2007, said he had been concerned for a long time about the ministry of Bishop Blake. "He has cropped up many times, usually by offering blessings to civil partnerships of gay couples, and I know people from Cambridge who have wanted to go to him for blessings of civil partnerships," he said.

"I think the Church of England and others should be speaking out against the exercise of his episcopal ministry and indeed of the Open Episcopal Church he leads.

"The concern is simply that more and more members of the unsuspecting public will likely latch onto this man, now that he will be in the public gaze."

He continued: "I am really sorry for Jade Goody and I suppose I am glad in a way she had someone to say prayers at the wedding, as I do think she is far too young to be so ill but I am really saddened that this free-lance vicar has been involved. I just wish she had gone to her local parish priest."

Bishop Blake declined to comment.