Justin Welby was in Jordan recently at a Primates’ meeting. One of his more ambitious items on the agenda was a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from Anglican division over the nature of human sexuality to the far more important topic of climate change (née global warming). After all, the weather is far more interesting than sex to most Anglicans.

From here:

Speaking to reporters at the end of a three-day Primates’ meeting in Jordan, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he wanted to see the Anglican Communion begin to focus instead “on those things that affect the world, be that climate change, conflict, the need for the Church to be confident in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, carrying it out into the world … [and] safeguarding”.

And here:

We heard about and commend the work of the Anglican Environmental Network, noting that climate change is not a future threat but, for many in the world today, a present, lived reality;

Where does the hypocrisy come in, you might ask? First of all, the Primates didn’t hold a Skype meeting, they all flew to Jordan on carbon spewing jets.

Second, rather more importantly since plastic pollution does seem to be a genuine problem, the attendees had plastic water bottles on their tables when they could have used filtered tap water:

Still, hypocrisy is as old as humanity and an inevitable byproduct of something in which the church has ceased to believe: original sin. So to find it in the church isn’t particularly surprising. Nor is it surprising that no one is at all interested in what Welby and his Primates have to say for themselves.