'Occupy London' pits bishop against bishop in Church of England

Today I paid a visit to the 'Occupy the London Stock Exchange' protestors who have camped out outside St. Paul's Cathedral in central London. It was a fascinating visit, I sat in on a 'general assembly' and also observed a conversation between an occupier and a banker that was being filmed for a British TV station. But what is perhaps the most interesting to me about the Occupy movement in London is the strange standoff it's not found itself in with the Church of England.

The 'occupy movement' has spread from its initial manifestation in August at Wall Street in New York to cities around the globe. On 15 October activists in London decided to stage their own version in the city's financial quarter ("the city"), the second most important financial centre in the world after Wall Street. They initially tried to occupy Paternoster Square, which is where the London Stock Exchange sits. But because the UK courts had already granted an injunction against public access to that particular square, police blocked their access to it.

So the 3,000 protestors moved to the nearby small open space next to St. Paul's Cathedral, the massive domed city landmark in the city built by Christopher Wren in 1697. The police surrounded the protestors in order to protect the cathedral. But the canon of St. Paul's told the police to leave. He said the church had decided to allow the protestors to protest peacefully on their land.