Gold is for secure. Pink is for danger. That formula is circulating among bishops in the first week of the Lambeth Conference. Several bishops confirmed on Thursday that a few representatives of Lambeth Conference Communications have invoked this formula while speaking to bishops during closed-door sessions. It treats bishops not just as children but as morons, incapable of deciding for themselves whom they will talk to or how they might think about the topic of an interview.
Gold badges indicate writers who are on the official communications team.
Pink badges are nearly red, and they indicate increasing danger. Pink badges go to everyone from the religion correspondents for London papers to homosexual activists to conservative activists. Pink badges mean Conference Communications will decide whether the journalist is entitled to talk with a bishop, or whether a bishop has received inordinate attention. Pink badges are not as severe as the pink triangles of Nazi Germany, but the spirit is similar. It's difficult to imagine Polly Bond, patron saint of journalists who work within the Episcopal Church, smiling beatifically from Heaven at this chain of events.