Lambeth Diary: the 'Clean and the Unclean'

Ruth Gledhill
July 17, 2008

My suspicions have been alerted by the helpful comment from 'anon' on the previous post. At Lambeth, the journos have been divided into the 'clean' and 'unclean'. You can guess which mob I'm corralled in with, and some of you probably think I deserve it. See my latest here. But pause to think for a moment. After dealing with a thankfully long-gone staff member at Lambeth Palace, a former senior editor at The Times told me, his voice shaking with stunned incredulity: 'They're just like the Communist Party.' He meant the Communist Party before the wall came down. Read and believe if you like the official stuff trickling in a tghtly-controlled way out of Jim Rosenthal's entirely independent press operation operating from a place I've yet to track down somewhere on the university campus. This is where the 'on side' 'journalists', many of whom seem by coincidence to wear episcopal clerical collars, are permitted to hang out. I am sure the citizens of the former USSR were similarly enlightened by what Pravda produced on a daily basis. The real operation, the concrete prison where proper journalists do their work, is being run by the staff from Church House. Peter Crumpler and his minions, themselves shut away in an even more terrible bleak hole of a broom cupboard than our own, are brilliant. (Update: Incredibly, TEC might be coming to our rescue. A series of unofficial bishop briefings is to be organised, beginning this evening. I've been asked to make clear that these are nothing at all to do with the official Lambeth press operation.)

There's nothing like a Lambeth Conference or two to swing me back into the conservative camp. Here I am, separated from the leaders of the Anglican Communion, of which I happen to be a covenanting member, by a ten foot wall. I've helped pay for this! Oh it makes me so cross. the rest