The best opinion writing from Sunday’s papers, all in one place. Brought to you by Caroline Crampton.

Barbara Ellen in the Observer takes on the big issue of the past few days: the manhunt and subsequent death of Raoul Moat. She writes that the whole incident was clearly a set-piece designed by Moat, with us, the viewers, cast as the willing audience to his ghoulish show. However, she says “It’s too pat to blame the news media” but does ask of the 24-hour news channels “when did it become routine to put out trailers for real-life tragedies?”

An editorial in the Sunday Telegraph looks at the state of the Church of England as it conducts its synod this weekend, arguing that “the Church of England faces the serious possibility of a damaging split over the issue of women bishops.” However, the Church looks to have abandoned the compromising attitude that have kept it safe for 400 years, and “in its determination to see women bishops, the majority has decided to sacrifice Church unity.”

Minette Marrin in the Sunday Times [paywall] writes of the landmark decision this week by the Supreme Court “that men and women who faced persecution in their own countries because of their homosexuality had valid grounds for claiming asylum and should not be deported.” However, she says although we should be proud in principle of this decision, in practice it is “completely unworkable” as “the unlucky people in the world with a genuine need for asylum amount not to millions but to billions”.

Michael Lind in the Washington Post looks at Washington’s love-affair with comprehensive reform, and argues that not every “complex, giant problem must be addressed by one complex, giant bill.” First healthcare, then financial reform, now perhaps energy is to get the sweeping, history-making treatment that has presidents go down in history. But this approach can be harmful, he says, and “instead of striding boldly into the future, we should grope our way cautiously forward, ever ready to back up upon encountering an obstacle and always prepared to consider an alternative path if the road is blocked”.

Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times writes from the West Bank of how Palestinians are beginning to see the value of non-violent opposition, in the style of Martin Luther King or Gandhi. But, he says, “the biggest challenge [is that] many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.” The answer, he argues, lies with the women of Palestine. “What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland?…  Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.”

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