Bishop Griswold revealed that he had a private meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss the crisis. He met Dr Rowan Williams, who nominally heads the communion, in Canterbury to discuss the measures the church proposes to defuse the situation at its triennial general convention in Ohio in June.

"This initiative is not designed to be top-down," said the Rev. Jack Gabig, the ACN Coordinator for the Children and Youth Initiative. "We will be asking questions like 'What do you need to make your youth ministry effective in fulfilling the Great Commission?' and 'What resources, training, and expertise do you have that you can share with the larger body?' We want this to truly be a networking movement."

Attesting to this is one of the Church of England's heaviest hitters, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who was in Australia recently on a lecture tour. An eminent theologian, an expert on the historical and biblical Jesus and a staunch believer in the resurrection, he baulks at denouncing those who are not.

But that doesn't matter in the world of publishing. The staggering success of The Da Vinci Code -- 40 million hardcover copies in print worldwide plus another 6 million in paperback -- has given a boost to books marketed as both nonfiction and fiction that play on the idea that great mysteries envelop the "greatest story ever told."