What should we make of the St Helen's Bishopsgate 'commissioning'?

The recent ‘commissioning service’ at St Helen’s Bishopsgate has attracted predictable criticism.

In that bastion of Church of England liberal thinking, the Church Times, Angela Tilby decried ‘the voice of the angry Puritanism that has been channelled down from the Reformation,’ before adding (oddly): ‘Today’s Puritans find it as hard as their ancestors to live with the creative ambiguity that, many would claim, is the lifeblood of the Church of England and defended by canon law.’ Er, come again? Many would argue that the ‘lifeblood of the Church of England’ is the 39 Articles with their insistence that ‘it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written’ etc.

The response from official sources has also been predicably anaemic and feeble. Someone described vaguely (again in the Church Times) as ‘a spokesperson at Church House’ said: ‘We hold a variety of views on these questions, all of which are held with integrity and all of which deserve respect.’ So much, then, for bishops’ ordination vows to ‘refute error… and hand on entire the faith that is entrusted to you…’ Then again, many of them seem to have taken that with a pinch of salt for some time now.