Once upon a time there was a family living in a house in the Province of Manglia. It was a clean house with clean children who drank clean water from the well owned by the landlord. The landlord maintained the well, following carefully the instructions in the big black Well Manual.

For many years the family lived happily and got on wonderfully with the landlord.

One day, when the well was due for its scheduled maintenance, the landlord (who, to tell the truth, was bored with the same old maintenance routine), decided to try something different, something that the Well Manual said Really Shouldn’t Be Done: he tossed a dead sheep down the well.

Before long, the family noticed that their once clean water didn’t taste quite right; they complained to the landlord, but he told them that the water just had one of many diverse flavours that they would eventually get used to. He pointed out that nobody likes change at first.

The family wasn’t happy, but the neighbouring Province of Ganglia generously routed some of the water from their clean well to the family. Now as everyone knows, strictly speaking, unauthorised pipelines across other landlords’ Provinces are Bad Manners, so although the family was happy, the landlord of Manglia was furious that the landlord of Ganglia had had the effrontery to question his prophetic, pastoral well-management innovations and ship in foreign water.

So the family and the landlord of Manglia both appealed to the Landlord of all the Provinces – known collectively as Tanglia because they are in a bit of a mess just like the Landlord’s eyebrows – who told the landlord of Manglia to fish the dead sheep out of the well and the landlord of Ganglia to stop interfering and keep his clean water to himself.

The landlord of Manglia responded by throwing another dead sheep down the well; by now he had captured the attention of other landlords who were beginning to think he was on to something. The landlord of Ganglia told the family, “don’t worry, plenty of clean water to go around – even if it is Bad Manners to say so”, upon which the landlord of Manglia decided to evict the family from their house so he could sell it to someone who likes water that smells of dead sheep.

The Landlord was furious and in private stamped his feet and gnashed his teeth; he wanted to throw both landlords down a well.

Of course, being the Landlord, he was obliged to maintain an air of decorum. To punish both landlords he told them that neither was invited to any more parties thrown by the Landlord, nor would they receive the Landlord’s traditional Christmas gift of lava bread made personally by the Landlord from oven-dried Swansea seaweed. That should sort them out, thought the Landlord, rubbing his hands in glee.

Or, to put it another way:

Dr Rowan Williams announced that provinces which had ignored his “pleading” for restraint would be banned from attending official discussions with other Christian denominations and prevented from voting on a key body on doctrine.

He admitted the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion was in a time of “substantial transition” but held back from taking the most serious step of expelling national churches from it.

His action, taken after years of patiently asking both conservatives and liberals to abide by agreed rules, will affect both sides in the dispute over whether the Bible permits openly homosexual clergy.

It has been triggered by the progressive Episcopal Church of the USA, which ordained its first lesbian bishop, the Rt Rev Mary Glasspool, earlier this month. The Episcopal Church also elected the first openly homosexual bishop in the Communion, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, in 2003.

But the move will also hit orthodox provinces in the developing world – known as the Global South – that reacted to the liberal innovations in America and Canada by taking conservative American clergy and congregations out of their national churches and giving them roles in Africa and South America. This has triggered bitter legal battles over the fate of church buildings.