One by one, some of the Bible's most exacting prohibitions and injunctions have been overruled in the name of secular progress. Most church leaders would support such development of doctrine. Few would suggest today that a woman who seeks to protect her husband in a fight by seizing his adversary's genitals should be punished by having her hand cut off (Deut. 25:12). Or that a stubborn, rebellious boy who drinks and eats to excess and refuses to obey his parents should be stoned to death (Deut. 21:21).

However, it is the Bible's prohibitions of men lying with other men, chiefly in Leviticus and the writing of St. Paul, that are cited by evangelicals as the main authority for their opposition to homosexual relationships and ordinations. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is probably right to predict that these teachings will eventually have the same status as former teachings on slavery, usury and hellfire.

Usury is forbidden in Exodus 22 and Deuteronomy 23. The early church councils forbade it to clerics and two councils, at Carthage and Aix, extended the ban to the laity. The Aristotelian view of money as a "barren" means of exchange was developed by Aquinas and not liberalized for centuries. The Roman Catholic Church opposed usury, as did Luther and other Protestant reformers, with the exception of Calvin.

Civil law broke away from canon law on this issue in England in 1571 and moderate interest could be charged. Elsewhere in Europe change took longer. The law was not altered in France until 1789. Capitalism forced the churches to adapt. Loans with interest have been tolerated by the churches since the 19th century, earlier in the case of some Protestants, although excess interest is still condemned as usury.

Slavery was sanctioned by Exodus 21, Leviticus 25 and other texts. St. Paul did not condemn slavery but recognized neither bond nor free in Christ (Gal. 3, I Cor. 12). Jesus's preaching in support of the poor and other principles of equality explicit in the New Testament inspired repeated Christian campaigns against slavery.

The beginning of the end of slavery came in the 18th century with campaigners such as William Penn. Wilberforce took up the cause, leading to the slave trade being made illegal in Britain in 1808, although it was not abolished in the British Empire until 1833. It was prohibited in America in 1865 by a constitutional amendment imposed at the end of the Civil War.

Hell is portrayed in Revelation 21 as a "lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." There are other references in the Bible to the fire of eternal torment representing the permanent exclusion from God's presence after death. Liberal theologians have for a century or more interpreted this as a loss of happiness brought on by refusal to do God's will.

In its 1996 report, The Mystery of Salvation, by the Doctrine Commission, the Church of England said: "Hell is not eternal torment, but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only end is total non-being."

Only in the past couple of years has the Church of England changed its mind on marriage after divorce. In November of last year, after months of heated debate by the General Synod, the Church decided to give its blessing to divorced couples seeking a church wedding "in exceptional circumstances." The ban on church weddings for divorcees was put in place by an Act of Convocation in 1957. The Church's doctrine of marriage, set out in the Book of Common Prayer, technically remains unchanged. The Church regards marriage as a lifelong bond between a man and a woman.