THE installation of Jeffrey John as Dean of St Albans has been brought forward by three months as a signal of the cathedral’s support for the celibate gay clergyman at the centre of the Church of England debate over homosexuality.

Opposition in the St Albans diocese to Dr John, currently canon theologian at Southwark, has been gathering force and evangelicals have been meeting to plan a strategy to force his withdrawal, as they did from Reading last year.

The move of the installation service at St Albans to July from October is an indication that liberals in the Anglican Church are no longer prepared to allow themselves to be held to ransom by their more conservative brethren.

Senior clergy in the St Albans diocese want to avoid a repetition of what happened in the Oxford diocese, where evangelicals mounted a successful international campaign against the appointment of Dr John, an open but abstinent homosexual, as Bishop of Reading. Dr John was persuaded to stand down by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

• The Ven Anthony Crockett, Archdeacon of Carmarthen, is to be the next Bishop of Bangor, becoming Britain’s first divorced and remarried bishop.

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