In the 1980s, Protestant denominations experienced considerable distress because, as one Methodist put it, the "ministers are Mondale Democrats and the parishioners are Reagan Republicans." It was close to the truth then and may be close to the truth now in the Episcopal Church.

Today, we're asking God what he would say to us about this teaching from Paul on Holy Communion. You know, there's a problem about us human beings and it keeps cropping up and that is that we tend to take the good things that God has for us and we profane them. Whatever God does, whatever God makes, whatever he says, it's pure and beautiful and holy. But we have a way of desecrating these things. The creation-beautiful beyond words. But we pollute and destroy. Human life-sacred.

Mr Slee seems not to have noticed that this is not 'King James Version language' (as he puts it), but a quotation from the Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough.

In his poem 'The Latest Decalogue' Clough parodied attempts to update each of the Ten Commandments in turn, with such couplets as 'Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat/When it's so lucrative to cheat', or the one quoted above, and they are obviously deeply ironic.

First up was Rowan Williams. He's a very clever man, who held a lectureship in Cambridge and a Chair in Oxford before moving onto higher things. (You can find an excellent introduction to his theology by the religion editor of the TLS, Rupert Shortt.) The interview in fact had more of the feeling of a Cambridge supervision than a Today programme grilling. But Williams got into severe difficulties at various points.