Loki forbid that this is something that will happen too often but this blog is forced to at least
emit a low mutter in defence of the religion correspondent of the Times.

(Yes that was the vile Murdoch rag, the Times and the words were indeed “religious correspondent”. I told you that this wouldn’t happen too often.)

Ruth Gledhill’s blog has been getting lambasted by her fellow Christians in the Christian chatroom at Ship of Fools. LA Dave says:

mouthpiece for the Anglican right.
Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London is plainly one of the celebrity religion journalists (probably because she is one of only a handful of reporters at the quality press who bother covering religion). Reading her blog, however, I come away with the opinion that her pieces tend to be sensationalist and forever proclaiming that schism is imminent. Moreover, she tends to get her notion of American opinion on Anglican matters from the right-wing American Anglican blogs, such as Stand Firm and David Virtue, while ignoring liberal or even centrist opinion.
What is Ruth’s reputation in Blighty?

Well, she’s hardly a “celebrity”. She is the writer of the most popular blog on the Times. She is obviously a standard Anglican but she’s pretty fair-minded in her discussion of most things.

(She has spoken well of this blog in the past. Not that that would skew my judgement or anything…… Well, OK, it completely skews my judgement. But do you thing Anne Coulter would recommend any atheist blogs to her readers?)

I very rarely agree with her opinions. I don’t share any of her beliefs. But no one could see her as an illiberal ranting conservative. So this makes me confused.

Just to whet her appetite: One liberal contributor to Titusonenine just described her as the “Anne Coulter” of something or other. To those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Coulter, she is a far-right commentator. Unfair to be sure, but she is not all that popular among TEC liberals.

What? Anne Coulter strikes any Brits who’ve ever read any of her stuff (e.g. moi) as an extreme far-right-wing religious fanatic. There is genuinely no point of comparison here. (Sorry, no idea what TEC liberals are.)

I had a look at Titusonenine to search for what they found so right-wing in her mild bicycling-to-communion style anglicanism. But the only reference I could find was a listing of her blog on their “Anglican / Episcopal News”

I tried to find out what Titusonenine was about as a blog but my boredom threshold is way too low to go into Anglican debates about ordaining gay bishops and so on. But that’s what it seems to be full of. No eccentric characterisations of a mildly traditionalist anglican reporter as a right wing fundy maniac.

I suspect that LA Dave has, oh my Ogum!, been bearing false witness against Ruth Gledhill. In a Christian chatroom? Surely not? I am shocked.