‘I look to spending the next seven years with you,’ said Bishop Sarah Mullally at the Diocese of London’s ‘Chrism Mass’ on Maundy Thursday this year. ‘Well, that’s her out of the race,’ said everyone – and everyone was wrong.

Perhaps this is a modern twist on the old nolo episcopari rule: that those being considered for episcopal office had to make clear they didn’t want it. Which, frankly, would be wise right now. As the Bishop of Gloucester put it, anyone wanting to be Archbishop of Canterbury ‘needed their head examined.’

The church is in a mess. It is deflated and downhearted; the old issues of female ordination and whether we can ordain or bless the marriage of homosexuals still foster great disagreements across the church. The sense that the congregation in the pews are seen as (

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