To become a practitioner, look no further than to emulate the high bar set by Justin Welby, a master of eye-catching diversionary irrelevance.

All the right ingredients are in his recent India performance:

Lay on your face in a public venue where all can see. Cameras should be present. And the press.

Apologise for something that happened 100 years ago and had nothing to do with the organisation you are affiliated with but is a part of your country’s colonial past. The contrition will echo with righteous resonance in the empty skulls of the Woken everywhere.

If done with sufficient flair, this will divert attention away from the practitioner’s own failings which, although they may be as numerous as the stars in the Eye of Sauron Nebula, will be forgotten in the spectacle of Ecclesiastical Theatre.

Make sure you imply a connection with Christianity, especially if there isn’t one. You can’t go wrong: everyone hates Christianity. Especially clergy.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has apologised “in the name of Christ” for the 1919 massacre at Amritsar in India, when hundreds of people were shot dead by British forces.

Prostrating himself at the memorial to the Jallianwala Bagh killings, Justin Welby said: “The souls of those who were killed or wounded, of the bereaved, cry out to us from these stones and warn us about power and the misuse of power.

“I cannot speak for the British government … but I can speak in the name of Christ and say this is a place of both sin and redemption, because you have remembered what they have done and their names will live, their memory will live before God. And I am so ashamed and sorry for the impact of this crime committed here.”

Hindus, Christians, Muslims and Sikhs were killed in April 1919 when they gathered in Amritsar, in Punjab, then part of British India. They were protesting peacefully after earlier riots over the arrest of pro-independence leaders.