But, I challenged him, conscious of what many evangelicals believe, wouldn't you say to them that while you love them, their relationship was sinful or inappropriate?

'I would say, "I will always love you, full stop. End of sentence, end of paragraph." Whatever they say, I will say I always love them.'

Listening to the archbishop, you get the sense that he is never calculating who might be offended, or attracted, by his words. He is following what he believes to be the path that Jesus has called him to take."

Difficult though the question was, did Archbishop Welby really need to endorse prayers of blessing for same-sex couples? For a hypothetical prayer of blessing with the couple together was the context of Mr. Gove's question to Archbishop Welby - would he pray for them together after they had asked for his blessing? 'You bet I would, absolutely.' He even went on to say that he would pray with them if they wanted him to, which presupposes that the couple would be professing Christians wanting to have a prayer meeting with him to ask for God's blessing on their homosexual relationship.

Could not Archbishop Welby have made clear that because of his calling as a Christian minister he could not ask the Lord Jesus to bless a sexual relationship which God's Word expressly forbids, irrespective of who was involved and how much he personally loved them?

Could he not have made clear that Christian prayer for a person in a homosexual relationship involves praying that God would bestow his gift of repentance, a gift we all desperately need?

After all, according to the Anglican tradition repentance is God's gift to his penitent people. In the Absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer, the minister prays: 'Wherefore let us beseech him (Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ) to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do at this present, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy; so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.'

Regrettably - and this was clearly not Archbishop Welby's intention - his comments inadvertently imply that those of us in Anglican ministry, who would not pray with our son or daughter and their partner in a homosexual relationship and would not attend their civil marriage, do not love our children. Or at least do not love them as much as he loves his.

Of course, we should still love our children if they did such a thing and should pray fervently for them in our own private devotions but loving them involves not colluding with their decision to reject the revealed Word of the Lord Jesus Christ and thus to place themselves outside of God's will.

The very least that can be said about this latest development is that, for Bible-believing Archbishops from the two-thirds world, some of whom are risking their lives every day for Jesus in the teeth of Islamist violence, Archbishop Welby's Spectator interview is unlikely to inspire confidence ahead of January's summit.

Julian Mann is vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire, UK - http://www.oughtibridgechurch.org.uk/our_prayers.html