When Welby was Dean of Liverpool, he got its cathedral bells to peal the Beatles' Imagine, which Lennon himself called "anti-religious, anti-conventional and anti-capitalistic." Lowbrow Welby also salivated at shock-jock artist Tracey Emin's steamily suggestive installation of a neon sign in pornographic purple above the cathedral's west door, that reads: "I felt you and knew that you loved me."

One thing is certain that the programmes will be tailored to show that the CSI is doing a great job and is running its development projects very well. It is already indicating that the Lambeth team will be visiting the project sites/church buildings and that seems to become a major part of the programme schedule.

That is just what the West is doing, especially the Anglophone West. Britain, Australia and even the God-fearing United States are becoming atheist societies. Britain is more atheist than Australia, which is more atheist than the US, but the trend of radically declining belief is undeniable in all three.

In every generation the Church faces a live or die challenge. Convert or be converted. Either act as an agency for people to encounter the Living God and be forgiven, turned and transformed; or fit into the unforgiving contours of a society that is driven by other forces, other appetites, and smear over their agenda a patina of spirituality that confers a thin covering of political and cultural legitimacy.