23rd April Bishops open up entry to Heaven to all

In a controversial move that will vex vicars, worry wardens and confuse curates, the Church of England has announced plans to introduce a rule that at least one candidate on its shortlists for senior Church of England posts must "not believe in God or something or someone bigger out there or something like that."

"We know this will ruffle some feathers", said Church of England chief believer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Wustin Jelby, who had earlier admitted in an exclusive interview to Grace Under Pressure's saintly scribe that he'd only applied for the job because of the big house, the bling and the chance to conduct secret Royal weddings." 

"But if we in the church want to broaden our appeal to the general public then the time is right for immediate action to include non-believers, heretics, blasphemers and general atheists in our power base. It's something we used to do in the good old days but then we decided to burn them all as witches. Unfortunately we had to stop that because of increasing our carbon footprint."

"Too often in recent times we have only shortlisted candidates who actually believe in God and who can most or less sign up to all our doctrines, dogmas and diocesan dictates. Now it's time to increase the range of colours with which we can paint our canvas. If we could only get Greta Thunberg on board that would be a wonderful way to attract a younger membership and bring the average age down to below 80."

"This is just one of 47 recommendations made by the 'Let's make church a teeny weeny bit relevant' task force which aims to increase the representation of non-believers at all levels of governance to at least 15%  by 2030. "This will hopefully reflect the proportion of worshippers who turn up on a Sunday just for the coffee and chat," concluded the Archbbishop before scuttling away to try on another big poiny hat.

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