Jan 11 2013  Edging towards doing the right thing  One of the
qualities of large institutions like churches is that they are
incapable of making sudden changes in their policies even if
they know that their current policy is wrong. Instead what they
do is slowly edge towards a new policy by incremental steps,
each time claiming that it is as far as they can go or is
theologically justified.  This is particularly true of quasi-
democratic religious institutions that have voting rules for
decision-making. Take for example the Church of England, the
parent organization of the worldwide Anglican communion. It is
pretty obvious that it is going to end up with full equality for
women and gays. But it cannot quite come to terms with it just
yet, so it backs and fills towards it, like someone slowly
immersing more and more of their body into cold water rather
than plunging straight in.  We saw how a few months ago, the
General Synod narrowly defeated a proposed change to allow women
bishops even though women clergy ha