Yet, as Grossman explains, the Episcopal Church's first female Presiding Bishop is a divisive figure. In Grossman's words, she is "[t]he leader who faces a costly fracture among the faithful, a crack radiating across the Anglican world." Some of her churches have bolted the flock, and others are expected to follow soon.

As USA Today reports:

What about her denomination's declining numbers?

Both meanings are poignant this coming week as the Primates of the Anglican Communion go to the place of their meeting - with each other and with God - near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

View video of Lord Carey's address

Duke's Methodist roots are well known, of course, and remind us of the debt that both Anglicanism and Methodism owe to each other. I served my Title as Curate at St.Mary's Islington in London and recall noting with delight on my first day there, that the great Charles Wesley had been a curate at the same church in the 18th century. Episcopalians are indebted to our young sister's commitment to evangelism and social action.

For with this decision, the country that first invented the concept of liberalism - the land of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, who fashioned the model of a free and tolerant society for the world - is now set to destroy the concept at its very heart.

That concept is freedom of conscience, the right of religious bodies to organise their own affairs in accordance with their own religious and moral precepts. For that is the real issue at the heart of the gay adoption row.