This narrative is being challenged by reference to historical facts which show that what he really believed, he was expected to quietly promote in the Church of England. After all, in the view of the radical lobby, that is why he was appointed.

His 1989 Oxford lecture on The Body's Grace was republished after his installation as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002.In it he referred to marriage as a 'formal socio-religious criterion', which is a far cry from Ephesians 5:32 where the union of marriage is compared with the relationship of Christ and his church.

He said: "In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures." The whole lecture is a sustained attack on orthodox Christian teaching on sexual ethics. He has never disowned this lecture.

In 2003, after public protest by 9 diocesan bishops, Rowan Williams persuaded Jeffrey John to stand down as nominee to the Suffragan See of Reading, to which he had been put forward as Bishop of Reading with Rowan Williams' approval, who then arranged his appointment as Dean of St Albans.

When same sex Civil Partnerships were being legalised, without any public pressure for it, the state offered exemption to the Church of England from the anti-discrimination aspects of the legislation eg in appointments and employment of those in Civil Partnerships. But the Church of England leadership declined the offer.

The Guidance from the House of Bishops on Civil Partnerships and later on Same-Sex Marriage prohibits clergy asking people questions about their sexual behaviour in relation to access to the sacraments. Revisionist bishops were always appointed to lead discussions in the House of Bishops on Human Sexuality. This was how through reflection and reception a new consensus was supposed to emerge in the Church of England and, eventually, in the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Communion

In a 2007 lecture in Toronto he explained away Paul's teaching in Romans 1 ( about God's wrath against same-sex practice). In spite of demands to the contrary, the bishops who consecrated Gene Robinson were invited to Lambeth 2008 and were seen to be in full sacramental communion with Canterbury. It was the orthodox bishops who found themselves out in the cold. He refused to discipline the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada despite many demands from his fellow Primates and his own promises to do so. Quite apart from questions of jurisdiction, he consistently maintained sacramental communion with TEC and Canada, while sidelining the newly emerging orthodox Anglican Church of North America, declaring that it was not part of the Anglican Communion.

Some of his staff, eg Gregory Cameron, while seemingly working on unity, turned out, later on, to be full blown revisionists.

These were all steps that were putting in place the infrastructure of what we are now seeing in the Living in Love and Faith Process that is intended to lead to Same Sex Relationships being blessed and solemnized in church and leading, inevitably, to same sex marriage in church.

Chris Sugden (Canon of Jos, Nigeria)