Dr Irene Lancaster's blog is always worth reading, but don't miss her latest posting. It is the start of a series examining UK Church attitudes to Israel (and therefore Jews, whatever the claim that opinions of the Jewish State are somehow detached from Jewish people).

She starts with the Church Times:

I first started reading the Church Times, together with seven other papers - ranging from Methodist to Catholic - at the request of the Manchester Jewish community. It was felt that someone with a background in theology might best be able to assess the effect on the Jewish community of the stream of invective streaming weekly from most of these papers. And if it wasn't Judaism per se, it was bound to be Israel.

The worst offender of the eight - alarmingly so - was the Church Times. It was dubbed 'the Guardian/Independent at prayer'. One of the paper's most prominent contributors is also Associate Editor of the Independent, as well as being the husband of the BBC's head of radio religious broadcasting. I had glimpsed this personage once on a visit to the BBC studios in Manchester, and would not like to have crossed her on a dark night - no, not at all!!

When I first understood clearly that anti-Semitism still existed in the Church, often wearing the mask of anti-Zionism, I recall that some articles in the Church Times at the time illustrated this particularly well.

What's that, by the way? Links between the Church Times, Independent and BBC? If these organisations were Jewish, people would suspect a cunning Zionist plot! As it is, given their heavy anti-Jewish-State bias, feel free to suspect pursuit of a different and very unpleasant agenda, if you are so inclined! But then, unlike 'anti-Zionists', perhaps you are too sensible for conspiracy theories.