OK, I give. What's up with the Anglicans anyhow?

According to The Salt Lake Tribune -- Eucharist Is Cannibalistic, Says Bishop. The article:

Anglican Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries has suggested that the "cannibalistic language of the Eucharist" is part of the reason Christianity is declining in Britain. In a controversial new book, God Outside the Box, Harries described the revulsion that the uninitiated can feel at one of the best-loved prayers in the Church of England's prayer book.
The Prayer of Humble Access reads, in part: "Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood."
The bishop suggested the church "qualify the imagery in order to help people realize that this is a metaphor. We should use images like 'the food of angels' and 'the bread of life' instead."

Bishop Harries noticed this only after he became a Bishop?

By the way, this ancient "metaphor" and "imagery" suggests to me the strongest sociological evidence that ancient Christians really understood that the Eucharist was in fact literally the Body of Christ. Unless someone can point out evidence of cannibalism in Judeah shortly before the Destruction of the Temple, I would suggest that the reintroduction of cannibalistic imagery runs counter to the typical direction of religious development - a development one sees in Bishop Harries' comments. First, there is cannibalism, then there is a symbolic understanding of the cannibalism tradition, and, finally, cannibalism is excised from the tradition. The reason for this is frankly that cannibalism is stressful for human societies; people don't like to be eaten.

[Please, please, hold your applause. The last part of the previous paragraph is not original with me. I lift the concept out of Eli Sagan's At the Dawn of Tyranny The Origins of Individualism, Political Oppression & the State. In a response to a book review Doctor Sagan gave this thumbnail explanation for his thesis:

My explanation of these phenomena is that the separation from the kinship system creates an almost intolerable burden of psychic anxiety which can be contained only by investing political power in an omnipotent masculine monarch. Also, that human sacrifice is a mechanism of defense erected against that same anxiety. Once a fundamental transformation of the kinship system has been accomplished — as in Archaic civilization—both human sacrifice and this exaggerated conception of tyrannical monarchy are unnecessary.

Which is why I say that the reintroduction of images of human cannibalism in the First Century is signal in understanding what the ancient Christians believed.]

The reintroduction of cannibalistic imagery circa 30 AD turns this typical development on its head. I would suggest that the motivation for introducing such a substantial and unusual concept into a religious tradition must itself be substantial and unusual. Such as, for example, that the ancient Christians believed that they had been told by the Incarnate God that they were actually supposed to ingest his flesh in the Eucharist.

Just some offhand theological and sociological speculation.