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Lord Eames, the former Anglican Primate of All Ireland and chairman of the Lambeth Commission, is on Sunday Sequence tomorrow giving his response to the the news from New Orleans that the US Episcopal Church's bishops have on the appointment of any more non-celibate gay or lesbian bishops. He will be joined in conversation by Stephen Bates of the Guardian.

Will this decision by the American church be sufficient to hold the Communion together, in the face of continuing moves towards separation by some leading traditionalist Anglicans? In my absence from the chair this week, my colleague Robbie Meredith will be presenting tomorrow's edition of Sunday Sequence.

Add your views to the question everyone's now asking (or should be!): Has Rowan Williams dodged an ecclesiastical bullet?

To date, more than a third of the staff of , have resigned since the appointment of the Hall's new principal, the Revd Dr Richard Turnbull. What follows is the text of a letter from former members of staff at Wycliffe Hall which was published recently in both the Church of England Newspaper and (in an edited form) in the Church Times. Wycliffe Hall is one of Oxford University's permanent private halls and an evangelical theological college which provides clergy-training for the Church of England. The letter is from Eeva John, the Revd Geoff Maughan, and the Revd Dr David Wenham. You can hear my interview with Eeva John on this week's Sunday Sequence.

Pictured: a stain glass window featuring the 14th century religious reformer and Oxford theologian John Wycliffe, who produced the first English translation of the Bible (c. 1382). Wycliffe's writings inspired the pre-Reformation reform movement known as the .

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The rumbles on. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport turned up late for a photoshoot at a Tamside hospital. Other MPs had already been snapped, but Mr Purnell agreed, in any case, to have his photograph taken. That much everyone agrees on. Mr Purnell's spokesman has attempted some clarification of what went wrong in this episode:

He knew they were going to merge those two photographs together but he thought it was for internal NHS use only. He didn't realise it was being sent to the local press. In retrospect it wasn't a great idea to photoshop the images but he didn't want to let anyone down.

Which explains why the Culture Secretary agreed to stand in precisely the right spot to enable a digital merging of the two photographs.

Clearly, the whole affair is rather embarrassing for the cabinet minister who has been at the forefront of the government's response to some recent examples of deception in the UK's broadcast media -- and the man who came up with . But is it all a digital storm in a virtual teacup? After all, it's not as if Mr Purnell was pictured at an event he hadn't actually attended. His presence in the picture that was published in the local press merely served to bring more attention to a new development at a local hospital. Is that such a bad thing? I merely ask the question: you provide the answers.

An Amnesty International rally billed as "" will take place tomorrow, Saturday, outside Belfast City Hall at 12 noon. A Sunday Sequence reporter will be there; we'll include that event as part of our wide-ranging coverage of the Burma uprising on Sunday morning.

Well, that title is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek overstatement. I am a fan of Iain Dale's blog. But on , as part of a "Guide to Blogging 2007", Iain offered a proposed list of the "Top Ten Religious Blogs". At Number 6 was "The Protestant Gazette", a blog written by Ian Hall, the minister of John Knox Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, on Belfast's Shankill Road.

On Tuesday of this week, just fifteen days after Iain's list went online, The that it "will cease to publish from today." Ian Hall explained that "There are other projects in my ministry which I would like to spend more time on and as a consequence something else has to be sacrificed."

Such, you may think, are the dangers of being named by Iain Dale in a list of top blogs. , beware!) The list may have brought Ian Hall the kind of attention he was not seeking. The day before announcing the closure of his blog, he posted this comment:

Over the past number of weeks I have noticed an increase in the number of comments which have personally attacked some of my brethren in the Free Presbyterian ministry . These comments have not been published nor will they be in the future. The usual collection of non-separatist evangelicals, hyper-calvinists, theological crackpots , and chip on the shoulder ex-Free Ps have been responsible for this personalised abuse . This motley crew can find another blog to peddle their anti-Free Presbyterian hatred.

The Protestant Gazette has itself published criticisms of other named individuals, but it appears that the debate in recent weeks has become a little too hot to handle. Perhaps the closure of this blog should been seen in the context of some continuing disagreements within the Free Presbyterian Church about their retiring Moderator's role in a power-sharing government; or perhaps not -- it's dangerous to speculate. Nevertheless,
I'm sure there is a lesson in this episode, somewhere, about the importance of conducting theological and political debates with sensitivity and respect. As John Knox himself once famously put it, "You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time."

This is a slightly curious story. The Vatican has issued this warning to Catholics across the world: if someone tries to sell you a piece of the late pope's cassock as a "relic", . But the warning is made on a website which has been offering people the said relic for "an optional small donation to cover postage costs". The warning -- which, to be fair, sounds more like a clarification -- follows the Italian media's coverage of the online relic distribution. What is the diocese offering the relics? The Holy Diocese of Rome.

One commenter here has asked why I've been using the term "Burma", rather than "Myanmar" (the UN-recognised designation) to refer to the country. You could equally wonder why the name "Rangoon" is being used instead of "Yangon". For an explanation, see .

More on that HIV conspiracy theory . This is from Paul Bailie, the executive director of . Paul worked as an academic in Kenya for more than four years before returning to Northern Ireland. For a useful guide to HIV issues, see .

I first heard a very strong anti-condom lecture in the year 2000. It was given by a professor of medicine in Kenya -- let's call him Professor X -- a highly placed man who worked in public health. His theory, as he explained it to my students in Kenya, was that Aids was developed as biological weapon by the USA under Ronald Reagan, with French assistance. Aids was developed, he claimed, to wipe out black people everywhere. He briefly raised the possibility that condoms had been infected with HIV, but he majored on the point that the HIV virus can pass through latex. (This with the anti-condom lobby.)

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That's the bizarre view of the head of the Catholic Church in , Archbishop Francisco Chimoio (pictured). He believes some European-made condoms , the virus that causes Aids -- and that some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

I first encountered this particular conspiracy theory a few years ago on a visit to Kenya, where some local priests and pastors were offering their parishoners "reasons" to avoid condoms (and choose sexual abstinence instead) in the context of an HIV epidemic. Clearly, some conspiracy theories are merely bizarre; but this one is dangerously bizarre. That it should be supported by such a highly-placed and respected church leader in a country where 16 per cent of the population is already infected with HIV -- well, it is breathtakingly irresponsible.

A local angle on the extraordinary scenes we're witnessing in Burma is suggested by Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland director. He writes:

Could Northern Ireland be helping to arm the military dictatorship in Burma? That's what Amnesty International fears, given the UK's lax arms export controls and the fact that at least two local companies help manufacture components or software which go into a type of attack aircraft believed to have been sold to Burma. The local firms, named by Amnesty, are involved in the supply of engine control systems and ejector seats which are reportedly used in Chinese K-8 attack jets and sold on to Burma. The Government - and, locally, OFMDFM - could do more than posture on Burma and actually tighten up the loophole-ridden controls that currently don't prevent UK-based companies, even if unwittingly, from helping to arm the dictators.

See for Amnesty's report, "Northern Ireland: Arming the World", which we examined on a recent edition of Sunday Sequence.

The DUP's appears to have a bee in his bonnet about the teaching of evolution in Northern ireland's schools. He has been tabling written questions for the Stormont Education Minister, Caitríona Ruane, about whether Creationist students will be marked down of they give Creationist answers in school examinations, and about the resources and training being offered to teachers wishing to "explore explanations for the development of life on earth, other than evolution". His persistent questioning on these matters can be read . You'll notice that Mr Simpson's questions evolve in specificity with each reply from the Minister.

Sample question:

Mr David Simpson asked the Minister of Education, pursuant to her answer to AQW 928/07, if she will confirm that pupils who answer examination questions outlining (i) creationist; or (ii) intelligent design explanations for the development of life on earth, will not be marked lower than any pupil who answers giving an evolutionist explanation.

Which prompted this careful reply from the Minister:

I am not involved in the setting or marking of public examinations. I am informed by the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment that public examinations are based on specifications which form the basis for teaching and learning throughout the two years of Key Stage 4. These stem from criteria agreed across the Regulatory Authorities. However, not every area of a specification lends itself equally well to an examination question. Therefore every pupil’s examination answers are marked solely in accordance with the awarding body’s Mark Scheme for the relevant question. The Mark Scheme sets out the range of answers and valid alternatives that pupils have to include in their answer to gain marks for it. The number of marks a pupil receives for any answer will therefore depend on how well their answer matches the Mark Scheme.

Incidentally, Mr Simpson's DUP profile as one of his interests.

UPDATE (26.09.07): on Irish News and Belfast Telegraph related strories. (Many thanks to Pete Baker.)

A remarkable image showing Burmese monks leading thousands of people in protests this weekend. They are demanding democratic reforms from a military dictatorship that has remained in power since it staged a coup in 1988 and subseuently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations organised by Aung San Suu Kyi.

This month's pro-democracy protests are the largest in Burma since those demonstrations. Aung San Suu Kyi won a general election in 1990, but the junta ignored the results of the polls. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but has spent 18 of the last 20 years in detention.

Some of the most poignant images in the current clergy-led demonstrations are the pictures of monks walking with their alms bowls turned upside down, facing the ground -- indicating their unwillingness to take anything the junta has to offer.

For more on this story:
Sunday Sequence duscussion of the protests, featuring a Burmese who was tortured for his pro-democracy work.
on the protests.

Congratulations to my fellow blogger Mick Fealty (pictured), founder of , who posted the inaugural article on , the Daily Telegraph's new political blog, at 11.18 this morning.

On breaks from writing today, I watched some of the proceedings of the Labour Conference on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Parliament Channel. MP, the former minister for Europe, chaired a session dealing with the future of communities in the UK, which provided a few bloggable moments. The mics were left on during the live broadcast, which enabled viewers to hear some of the conversation between Vaz and the panel event he chaired, featuring cabinet ministers and other politicians. Thus, we could hear the deputy leader whispering clues about who a particular local councillor (asking a question) was. We could also hear Vaz telling the panel not to begin answering questions until he called their name (since, he explained, the microphone in the hall would not be turned on until tthat cue). "Don't speak until I call your name," says Vaz, " -- think of it just like the old cabinet." At which point, one of the cabinet ministers (I couldn't identify which it was) jokes, "Don't speak at all, then!"

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The fact that Billy Graham is 88 years old, now retired from public speaking, was recently hospitalized for intestinal bleeding, and is now in seriously failing health, clearly hasn't moved Christopher Hitchens to much sympathy.

In a recent interview, Hitchens describes Billy Graham as "a self-conscious fraud" and "a disgustingly evil man". Speaking on C-Span as part of a promotion for his new book, , Hitchens claims that the evengelist made a living by "going around spouting lies to young people. What a horrible career. I gather it's soon to be over. I certainly hope so." You can watch the 2 September interview during which he makes the comments below.

Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, the authors of , have responded to Hitchens in detail . They write:

The charge that Graham went into ministry to get rich is just as easily refuted, both by what he did and didn't do. Well aware of how easily a famous preacher could be destroyed by financial or sexual scandal, Graham took pains early on to protect himself from both. He insisted that crusade accounts be audited and published in the local papers when the crusade was finished. Having founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 1950, he took a straight salary, comparable to that of a senior minister of a major urban pulpit, no matter how much in money his meetings brought in. He was turning down million-dollar television and Hollywood offers half a century ago. He never built the Church of Billy Graham, and while he lived comfortably, his house is a modest place. If he had wanted to get rich, he could have been many, many times over.

I suspect we will soon be assessing the legacy of Billy Graham -- his cultural impact and his popularist style of theology. Christopher Hitchens has become famous for his iconoclastic journalism (consider his scathing attack on the legacy of Mother Theresa), but do his comments about Billy Graham have the merit of accuracy, notwithstanding the tastelessness of their timing? Or do they merely reflect the intensity of Christopher Hitchens's hatred of all things religious?

Today presenter John Humphrys joined us on today's Sunday Sequence to talk about his new book, . The book is based on his Radio 4 interview series, "Humphrys In Search of God" (which you can hear again here). John explained why he lacks the intellectual confidence to be an atheist -- he is, he says, an "agnostic", and regards this as the most intellectually credible position to hold on the question of God's existence. We discussed arguments for God's existence, the problem of suffering, the case for deism, and whether John is likely to convert to some form of theism in the future. For the record, he promised me his first interview in the unlikely event of a Damascus Road conversion.

The atheists reading this blog may wish to give John some advice on how to beef up his agnosticism into full-blooded atheism. Those who believe in God may wish to point him to arguments for God's existence that could prove more compelling than the traditional "proofs" he disputes in his book.

A Catholic grammar school in Belfast has been advised by the Church to close down its Amnesty International group as a consequence of the human rights organisation's new policy on abortion (that victims of rape and incest should be entitled to abortions). Henry McDonald in today's Guardian. Patsy McGarry reports the same story in .

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews, has already stated his belief that Catholics should resign from Amnesty International given the organisation's new stance on abortion. A spokesman for the diocese of Down and Connor says: "The sacredness and protection of all human life will be discussed at the next general meeting of the Irish Bishops' Conference."

Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them? With that question, Richard Dawkins fires back at John Cornwell's booklength "angelic riposte" to his bestselling book, The God Delusion, in today's Independent. You can read Dawkin's un-edited letter , and listen again to my 20 minute interview with John Cornwell (broadcast this past Sunday) here.

On the question Dawkins asks: Is this an example of what philosophers call a "category mistake"? Whatever your views on religious belief, surely belief in God and belief in leprechauns are in different "epistemic" categories. Some atheists may disagree on that point, but it seems to me that religious belief cannot be so easily dispatched. Belief in God may turn out to be a false belief. but it is a belief that persists amongst some of the best-educated and most sophisticated people in the world, and is prima facie not comparable to mere fairy stories.

The MP and former government minister made the case for criminalising those who pay for sex on Sunday's programme, in debate with the philosopher . Denis argued that a change in the law was necessary to tackle the growing problem of . He says:

Until you have the Wilberforce moment when you say those who buy [sex] are just as guilty as those who are selling [women], it will continue to grow. It's not until there is a regular flow of men before the courts because they have paid for sex with illegally trafficked sex slaves that we will see a change in culture.

Peter believes this argument is comparable to criminalising driving on the basis that some drivers steal cars. Instead, he argues that commercialised sex between consenting adults should be legal and regulated: sex-workers should be registered, taxed and subject to health and safety legislation. This would be a better strategy, he argues, for tacklingsex-traficking, which would not reduce other freedoms within society. Denis replies that challing the demand for sex-work is the best way to reduce its supply, and a change in the law would be a major step in the right direction in the battle against the abuse of women and girls in the sex-trade.

This is what happened recently when the Blueprint team filmed on the River bann, near the Movanagher plantation site. I set off in a two-man canoe, accompanied by Chris, ready to deliver a piece to camera about some of the reasons why this seventeenth century plantation failed. We were followed by the rest of the team -- Natalie, Siobhan, Seamas and Brian -- in a make-shift catamaran. When their raft got stuck on the rocks in this shallow stretch of the Bann, they had to be rescued by Rob, our guide forn the day, who simply waded into the water in his jeans and trainers and pulled the boat, Rambo-style, into the centre of the river. Rob, incidentally, is one of Ireland's leading barefoot waterskiers.

You can download our new ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ ethics podcast each week here. I know it says "everyday ethics" but it's a weekly download: that's because the title has more to do with the subject matter than the frequency of the editions. Each podcast programme will last between twenty and thirty minutes and you can download the latest edition each Sunday. Next week's edition of Everyday Ethics will feature two ethical stories much in the news this week: the judicial review into Northern Ireland's sexual orientation regulations, and a debate about whether UK law should be changed to criminalise those who pay for sex.

Mr Justice Weatherup's of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 has been published. The judgement is available in full . The judge upheld the new regulations with a single exception:

I have found an absence of proper consultation on the harassment provisions. By reason of that finding and of the extended reach of the harassment provisions beyond that of discrimination and statutory harassment, the wider definition of harassment than that appearing in the European Directive, the concerns of the Joint Committee and the added consideration required when the offending matter is grounded in religious belief, the harassment provisions in the Regulations will be quashed.

The Review followed an application by seven Christian groups (namely: (1) The Christian Institute, (2) The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland, (3) The Congregational Union of Ireland, (4) The Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ireland, (5) The Association of Bapist Churches in Ireland, (6) The Fellowship of Independent Methodist Churches, (7) Christian Camping International (UK) Limited).

Update: On Sunday's programme, I'll be joined by representatives from the Christian Institute and the Coalition on Sexual Orientation, plus an academic lawyer, to examine the implications of Mr Justice Weatherup's judgement.

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the British Association for the Advancement of Science's annual gathering. This year the week-long Festival is being held at the University of York. I joined David Efird, a philosopher at the University, to explore the question: Does God have a future in an age of science? We'd expected a small group of hardy Festival-goers to turn up for the two-hour session at the Physics department. In fact, we only had hand-outs for about thirty people. Ten minutes before our start time, the seminar room already had fifty people and porters were searching for extra chairs. In the end, we had a class of more than eighty -- professional scientists, science educators, Festival speakers, and members of the public. All of which is an indication of the interest in what could be termed "the God Debate" amongst the scientific community (and the science-aware community).

David examined some philosophical issues implicated in the debate about whether it is rational to believe in God today, and I explored the intelligent design movement as a case study in some of those questions: What constitutes "proper science"? How should we recognise "pseudo-science"? What should (and should not) be taught in state-financed science classrooms? What is the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural"? Can "metaphysical naturalism" be sustained in a quantum-mechanical world? We also examined the difference between older Creationist accounts of human origins and Intelligent Design Theory, which conducts its business in the currency of science.

As predicted, a fiesty and good-natured debate ensued -- thankfully, this was not an audience of passive listeners. My work on Sunday Sequence and other programmes proved very useful in preparation for the session, since I've interviewed practically every significant figure in this international debate, from Richard Dawkins and Lewis Wolpert to Alister McGrath and John Cornwell. I even got to interview the lawyer who successfully made a case against the inclusion of Intelligent Design Theory Pennsylvania last year (in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board). I was rather taken by just how many Northern Irish figures play a role in this extended debate: from Archbishop Ussher to Alister McGrath and John Lennox, two Oxford dons with books challenging Dawkins's reasoning. In addition, Queen's University is the academic home of two of the world's leading experts on the creation-evolution debate: the historians Peter Bowler and David Livingstone.

As we reported recently, the religious book market has doubled in the UK, not least because of the renewed interest in these kinds of questions. A brand new publication which I discussed at the Festival of Science is Steve Fuller's fascinating book, Science vs Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution (Polity Press, 2007). Fuller is a sociologist at Warwick University; you may remember him from our Creation Wars special, which also included Richard Dawkins. Fuller gave evidence in the Fitzmiller case. He describes himself as a secular humanist, but he argued in Fitzmiller that the inclusion of ID in science education poses no threat to science. Look out for an interview with him on Sunday Sequence in the next couple of weeks, when we'll have a chance to examine some of these questions in more detail.

As predicted by a number of commentators, including this blog, Ian Paisley has announced that as Free Presbyterian Moderator. He has decided not to stand next January, when the position next becomes vacant. On tomorrow's programme, we'll ask if he was pushed. Certainly, his decision to form a joint executive with Sinn Féin has provoked enormous controversy across the twelve-thousand member denomination.

I see that Louis MacNeice has triggered a small-scale literary war on the blog while I've been away filming with the Blueprint team. We'll be discussing MacNeice's legacy on Sunday morning with the critic Edna Longley and the poet Gerald Dawe. We'll also we talking to Owen McCafferty about his play "which is finally being staged in Belfast. I'm going to the preview of the production tomorrow night at the Waterfront Hall's studio theatre and post a review here this weekend. I'll also let you in on what the Blueprint team has been up to in Mountsandel, the Sperrins, Movanagher, and Nendrum -- and how most of the production crew had to be rescued from a makeshift catamaran on a rocky section of the River Bann.

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1963 of one of the great Irish poets of the twentieth century, Louis MacNeice. Next week, across Radio Ulster, we'll be marking the centenary of MacNeice's birth on September 12, 2007.

MacNeice was born in Belfast ("to the banging of Orange drums"), though his parents were originally from Connemara in the West of Ireland. His birthplace at in Belfast is now marked with a blue plaque from the Ulster History Circle. In 1909, his family moved to Carrickfergus after his father was appointed rector of St Nicholas's Church, an Anglican parish in the town. He was educated, from the age of ten, in England. First at school in Marlborough, then at Oxford, where he met his close friend and poetic collaborator W.H. Auden (whose fame would later overshadow MacNeice). For a time he taught Classics at Birmingham and London, and soon began to earn his reputation as a prolific writer, producing many volumes of poetry and criticism. From 1941, he worked for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, making radio programmes -- including his own radio play The Dark Tower (with music by Benjamin Britten). Most critics identify his most significant work as "Autumn Journal" (1939), a meditation on the eve of war; but I've met many contemporary poets who have memorised some of his still much loved shorter poems. Of those, my favourite is probably "Snow":

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink rose against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes --
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

(Snow, 1935)

The circumstances of MacNeice's death are a little bizarre. He apparently contracted viral pneumonia while exploring a cave during research for a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio programme in 1963. (He may be the only poet to have died while making a radio programme.) MacNeice is buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard at Carrowdore in county Down (for map, see ). Look out for the snow in Derek Mahon's elegy for MacNeice, "In Carrowdore Churchyard":

Your ashes will not stir, even on this high ground,
However the wind tugs, the headstones shake.
This plot is consecrated, for your sake,
To what lies in the future tense. You lie
Past tension now, and spring is coming round
Igniting flowers on the peninsula.

Your ashes will not fly, however the rough winds burst
Through the wild brambles and the reticent trees.
All we may ask of you we have; the rest
Is not for publication, will not be heard.
Maguire, I believe, suggested a blackbird
And over your grave a phrase from Euripides.

Which suits you down to the ground, like this churchyard
With its play of shadow, its humane perspective.
Locked in the winter's fist, these hills are hard
As nails, yet soft and feminine in their turn
When fingers open and the hedges burn.
This, you implied, is how we ought to live.

The ironical, loving crush of roses against snow,
Each fragile, solving ambiguity. So
From the pneumonia of the ditch, from the ague
Of the blind poet and the bombed-out town you bring
The all-clear to the empty holes of spring,
Rinsing the choked mud, keeping the colors new.