About a year ago I posted a piece on the dire financial trouble of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. On the verge of a massive campaign to convert 10% of Sydney to their brand of conservative evangelical Christianity, the financial crisis hit, their investments took a nosedive, they lost over $100 million, and Sydney was saved from a wave of zealous evangelists.

The apparent foolishness of buying at the peak of the market boom and selling at its bottom suggests to me greater forces at work: that God works in mysterious ways, especially among evangelicals. According to Peter Jensen, the archbishop, people have simply been ‘too trusting of one another’ (God forbid, especially in a church).

And Jensen has not only set up a commission to advise on what to do about all this lack of gospel-driven money, but also a prayer group to pray for the comission. This is, he claims, a group of ‘mature Christians’, whose sole task is to ensure that the commission is at every point ‘bathed in the intercessory prayer of these saints‘.

All I want to say is: ‘Peter, my dear simple friend, you may wish to check the content of those prayers, since you are a little too trusting of those “saints”‘.

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