It has been a momentous year for the Church of England. In July the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, voted in favour of ordaining women bishops. Then there was the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference for bishops from the 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which saw much wrangling over the issue of gay bishops.

Both events brought the Church’s internal rifts into the public eye. When I visited churches this summer I found the Anglican faithful feeling embarrassed and misunderstood. “We’re a laughing stock,” said a churchwarden in north London. “People think we’re a bunch of loonies,” said a Surrey worshipper. “Ninety-nine per cent of what we do no one hears about, they hear the one per cent, which is the rows,” said a west London cleric. So, after years of reporting on a continuous decline in congregations, I was not surprised when the latest figures showed yet another drop in the number of Sunday churchgoers – now down to 983,000.