The Bishop of Greater London

Edit - after this post was written the Telegraph article was rewritten to remove the Bishop of Greater London and make it clear that Bp Croft thinks the "ban" is silly. There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repents or one journo that corrects a story...

Utterly intrigued by the discovery, courtesy of the Telegraph, of Jonathan Blake, "Bishop of Greater London".  Interestingly the Telegraph lists him alongside Stephen Croft, Bishop of Sheffield, as attacking the Church of England "Lord's Prayer" ad.

It says something for the religious illiteracy of the Telegraph that it takes this comment from Bp Croft:

And The Rt Rev Steven Croft, Bishop of Sheffield, said it was hardly surprising that the Lord’s Prayer had been banned “in the boardrooms of consumer culture” as it promoted everything global corporations were against.

as an attack on the ad, not on corporate culture. But let's leave Bp Croft aside. His point is well-made (if badly understood by the reporter, Victoria Ward, who is presumably hoping that if she writes a really good article she won't have to write in pencil any more.) And we've heard of the Bishop of Sheffield.

The Bishop of Greater London. I'd never heard of him. I mean, it doesn't sound like a proper title, like "Archdruid of Husborne Crawley", a post going back in its current form to 2000 AD and before the interruption due to the evil Celts to 4000 BC. Although I once met the Archdeacon of Charing Cross and that sounds pretty unlikely as well. Very Barchester.

What Victoria Ward fails to mention is that the Bishop of Greater London is not a Church of England or Roman Catholic bishop. He is a bishop, according to Wikipedia, of the Open Episcopal Church. And so entitled to that title. And according to their front page he is very much an action-bishop.

I don't quite understand the point the Bishop of Greater London is making in his comment on his own web site about the Lord's Prayer controversy, where he appears to be saying that identifying God with Jesus is wrong. But then he fell prey to that mistake of typing " fell pray ", so it could just be poorly wordsmithed.

So that's the Bishop of Greater London. I hear he has an Archdeacon of Fulham Broadway and a Dean of Staples Corner, and his cincture is technically called the M25, but that's just a rumour.