The global conference of influential evangelical anglicans is about to get under way in Jerusalem. Under the acronym of GAFCON, it ought to be good for a few jokes, but I haven’t heard any yet. I haven’t seen the agenda, but I’m confidently predicting that it will contain an item or two on homosexuality, the most high-profile issue currently facing the global anglican church. Chatting with a friend, himself a studious evangelical, I expressed surprise both that the anglican church has managed to hold itself together for so long, and then that the issue of homosexuality looks to be the one that finally rends it asunder. He said “it’s an authority of scripture issue”. Other issues, such as ethical decisions on whose regimes we endorse with our spending power, loving ones enemies, the rights of refugees, and responding to the needs of the alien, the orphan and the widow, apparently aren’t authority of scripture issues, otherwise presumably our learned colleagues would have chosen to hold their conference in an alternative location.