Interesting to hear the allafrica.com piece refer to him as the Bishop of Canterbury. Completely acccurate, just different to hear, to my ear anyway. The piece is of course riddled with inaccuracies, right from the first sentence ("Ever since the US and UK branches of the Anglican Church agreed to ordain gay Bishops...") And the language of course is appalling but it would be churlish to criticize the piece on that basis, as English is presumably not the Mother Tongue of the writer.

As for this para on him, "He made it clear that he will oppose gay marriage equality. The Prime Minister can expect a fight. But he said: “We must have no truck with any form of homophobia.”

He will have fun squaring that circle, as I think this week's election in America has pretty much made it clear that *secularly*, in the first world, opposition to marriage equality now does equal homophobia.

Peter Stanford has outlined the circumstance of +Justin's Evangelical beginnings with Holy Trinity, Brompton. One thing that can be said for HTB is that it has attracted many young as well as older people into the Church. After all, is that not our corporate mission?

One's spiritual provenance has to begin somewhere. And the Alpha scheme - even though it is certainly not perfect - is at the very least a way of attracting Christian disciples - something the church needs, especially in today's social environment.

If Bishop Justin just happened to get 'Baptized in the Holy Spirit' at Brompton, so much the better. He will now be able to understand where the power comes from for mission and reconciliation - gifts he has already exercised most effectively in his work in Coventry, Liverpool and Durham.

Let's pray that God will richly bless him in his present and future ministry. He will need that!

The fact that the Observer article by Peter Stanford had a photo in the newspaper of the Ultramontane Brompton Oratory with the heading Holy Trinity Brompton gave me much delight.

Perry it sounds fun ! But I can't find that picture- can anyone help ?

Laurence - try looking on page 34 of Sunday 11th November's OBSERVER - the article by Peter Stanford (in G)is entitled "The evangelical HQ that claims the new primate as one of its own". There in addition to a cut-out and keep full length photo of "the new primate" is an inset photo of Brompton Oratory rather than HTB - the shrine church of Saints Sandy and Nicky of Alpha fame.

The Dean of Durham's piece says it very well - as one would expect of that writer.

I hope it serves to show those who read these pages that we need to get behind this man with our faith and prayers as well as with our opinions (which I'm sure are never prejudices).

"[W]e need to get behind this man with our faith and prayers."

I would be a bit more inclined to pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury if the current incumbent had not tried to threaten and bully other provinces into toeing a conservative theological line.

I will certainly pray that the new Archbishop of Canterbury will leave other provinces alone.