The opening Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral yesterday of the 13th Lambeth Conference, the gathering every 10 years of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion, was clearly designed to show how un-English this worldwide denomination has become.
It began with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, delivering the opening salutation "The Lord be with you" not in English but in Swahili. It continued with Bishop John Sentamu of Stepney, the Ugandan High Court Judge who fled Idi Amin's dictatorship to become a priest of the Church of England, leading a Kikuyu version of the Gloria.
The epistle was read in Portuguese by the wife of the Bishop of South Western Brazil, Mrs Jubal Neves, and the gospel was proclaimed in Arabic by Bishop Ghais Malik of Egypt, primate of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. Before and after the gospel, a Latin-American troupe danced their way the length of the cathedral.
Nor did Dr Carey, who presided at the Eucharist, deliver the sermon himself. That honour fell to Bishop Simon Chiwanga of Mpwapwa, Tanzania, chairman of the consultative council.
Without mentioning any of the contentious issues that threaten to tear worldwide Anglicanism apart, Bishop Chiwanga called on the 800 bishops to look for the Christ in each other when controversy arose and to turn the other cheek. One obvious matter of dispute is homosexuality, on which the lesbian and gay Christian movement has distributed a pamphlet arguing for a change in the church's traditional attitude.
"Being Christ-like in our differences does not mean having no convictions or clear position of your own," said Bishop Chiwanga. "It is a call to interpretive charity in our Christian dialogues." Interpretive charity he defined as the ability to apply the most loving interpretation to other's actions and opinions.
Meanwhile, a local brewery has clearly taken to heart A.E. Houseman's reminder that "Malt does more than Milton can - to justify God's ways to man". It is offering participants and officials of the Lambeth Conference, including the press corps, a 15 per cent discount on food bought at one of its pubs. Alas, the discount does not seem to apply to its excellent beers, but your correspondent hopes to put in some further research.