A wedding was taking place. Love was being celebrated. But the sub-text was the struggle for the soul of a Church and how people would hear about God. And if they did hear about Him, what kind of God they would hear about.

Michael Curry is a superb preacher and a delightful man. And if everything wrong in the world could be put right by charm and beauty and wit, we would have nothing to worry about.

I was sorry to cast a cloud over what was and should be a very happy event, as two people celebrated their love in public.

One of the problems was that some events have a sub -text which is even more important than what was taking place at the time.

A wedding was taking place. Love was being celebrated. But the sub-text was the struggle for the soul of a Church and how people would hear about God. And if they did hear about Him, what kind of God they would hear about.

Some of my spiritual ancestors died and were put to death to defend the enormous and deeply precious truth about God and the quality of His love for us, so it is not much for me to risk a little social opprobrium for trying to do the same thing.

The dear couple had no idea who was being asked to preach at their wedding. It was an idea that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had suggested to them. They were hardly in a position to know or refuse.

And at one level, the choice was brilliant. Michael Curry is a gifted preacher and black. What a great way of signalling the coming together of American and British culture, white and coloured.

But there was a hidden sting in the tail. There is a civil war raging at the moment in Anglicanism (and elsewhere) between progressive Christianity that takes its priorities from the zeitgeist, the present culture, and a faithful orthodox belief, that keeps faith with what Jesus taught in the Gospels.

This is quite a fight. Orthodox Christians believe that we are caught up in a very serious struggle between Good and evil, and evil tries to trick us and hide the good from us; usually by dressing up something corrupt which pretends to be goodness itself.

This ‘telling the difference’ between good and evil is as important as being able to tell the difference between medicine and poison. It may be the difference between life and death.

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