Gay bishops are the least of the Anglican Church's worries, writes Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, left. In fact, the row over Gene Robinson's appointment could revive the Anglican Communion.

What now for the Anglican Church?

Actually this is not as bad news for the Church as Gene Robinson's critics make out. I've always said that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the gay agenda will be the salvation of the Church because there is nothing like a good bit of persecution to resurrect failing Christian institutions, especially persecution by fellow Christians.

Unlike the advent of women priests, when nearly 800 traditionalist clergy left in protest in England alone, that of gay bishops is unlikely to lead to mass defections. The approaching crisis over women bishops will in fact be far more serious. This is because evangelicals work differently to Anglo-Catholics. They prefer to reform, transform and take over from within.

This debate could revive the Church in an extraordinary fashion as the evangelicals redouble their efforts to save the soul of the Church they do not wish to leave. They won't want to expel the "apostate" Episcopalians in America, they will seek to convert them.

Dr Williams's role in all this will be of shepherd. He won't be so much looking for lost sheep, though. Instead he will be running round like mad, twisting and turning, flailing his crook and with cassock flying, trying to herd everyone back into the same pen, all together. Imagine a fiercely intelligent woolly border collie at a Welsh sheep trial, and you more or less get the picture.

Where do you think the next gay bishop will be appointed?

Already there are mutterings about Australia, but no one has heard anything definite yet. And there is of course Scotland, where a vacancy in Argyll and the Isles comes up soon. There are already naughty whisperings that Jeffrey John, the gay canon who was persuaded not to become Bishop of Reading, is in the frame for this one, although Argyll could have Britain's first female bishop, as these have been agreed to in Scotland.

Have we heard from the Roman Catholic Church? Is its approach different?

The Roman Catholics condemned gay marriages last week in a document that left no room for doubt where their views lie. Indeed, there are some who regard the determination of the American Anglicans to proceed on this issue as a deliberate snub to Rome, which still regards Anglican orders as "absolutely null and utterly void".

What is the Anglican situation on gay blessings. Is that the next battleground?

This is being debated in America today. One Canadian diocese has already authorised them. America is expected to endorse some kind of "local" option like Canada, which will allow individual dioceses to make up their own minds.

As regards the Church of England, the last similar outcry over an American action was in 1976, when the first women priests were ordained. England got around to ordaining them in 1994.

Dr Williams could be Archbishop of Canterbury for 17 years, and in scuppering Dr John's hopes for Reading, he has allied himself firmly with the evangelicals. So we can expect gay bishops and gay blessings here perhaps sometime in 2021, under the next Archbishop, unless, of course, the modern speed of communications, debate and change accelerates everything, and the traditionalists are right in their doom-laden prophecies concerning the liberal agenda.

In that case the Archbishop who succeeds Dr Williams could well be a woman lesbian "married" to another woman with three of four children cloned through modern reproductive techniques. That would give the Pope something to write encyclicals about.

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