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of a variety of initiatives which are episcopally led and episcopally inspired in
church and society. The areas of enriched discipleship on a local everyday level,
infused by prayer and service, and of Inter Faith encounter and understanding,
infused by patience and advocacy, are extremely urgent in a world where
movement and dislocation go together and identities seem to be very vulner-
able in the second and third generations of diaspora. We also need to decide if
we are to have a speci?c relationship of accompaniment with the Christians
and others in Egypt, Gaza, Syria and Northern Iraq. These are but a few starter
ideas and I know all of you will have lots more.

Towards greater unity and closer friendship may, as I said earlier, seem to be a
rather obvious and indeed predictable aspiration for people steeped in religious
language and spiritual idealism and, by this stage, experiencing a degree of well-
merited indigestion in this ?eld. The divine imperative latent in both phrases
nonetheless facilitates the exploration of a Godly life with a deep Trinitarian
underpinning. As disciples, lay and ordained, we are icons and agents of the
Trinity. This model is one of informed involvement and engaged accompani-
ment combined with pervasive compassion. We do not need to be the same
churches, in fact we are much better if we are not the same because then we
have the energy of di?erence and the elasticity of diversity. Things can happen
di?erently and coherently. This all will help us as we work at the discipline of
shared freedom within and without our Communion. We need to remain con-
stantly aware that in all of our constituent churches, the quest for a literalist
ecclesiology is always in danger of eroding the eschatological provisionality of
which I spoke earlier as Christ’s gift. Both liberalism and conservatism are very
much in danger of becoming, each separately and both together, de facto and
distinct churches within our churches. This needs careful handling because it is
the very antithesis of greater unity and closer friendship. Indulging such carica-
tures is a betrayal of the people who are our charge and who, irrespective of
our e?orts, are and will remain God’s people.

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