My mother's family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book - among them, Jews and Christians.
In the nineteenth century, many Anglican theologians, both evangelical and catholic, embraced positively the proposal of evolution.
During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.
Pope Benedict is an amazingly visionary person. What he has done is establish an evolutionary process that will help undo the Reformation. The Anglican Church has been hijacked by modernism, with synods trying to amend the faith and this process will allow traditional Anglicans to be themselves.
As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge.
And here at our Anglican Consultative Council, we have many reports of growth and great encouragement.
I suppose I'm a cultural Anglican, and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.
That Britain today is a liberal society is largely because of the philosophy and outlook of the Anglican Church, which did so much to shape our core values in the past few centuries.
I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.
When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.