Has everyone forgotten these are men of God? It's actually their job to stand up for the poor
Do you ever wish you were on Question Time? Do you shout answers at the screen as if it were a quiz? Do you drum your fingers impatiently as the panellists fail to say exactly what you know would demolish a rival's argument in seconds?
Maybe it's just me. I watch Question Time like my father used to watch Wimbledon: sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning further and further towards the TV, utterly engaged, shouting: "Go on, Tim! Smash it! Back to the baseline! To the net!", then slumping back and sighing: "God, I wish I was there to shout advice."
I actually was on Question Time once. I was extremely nervous and star-struck, made a joke about a bra and got a lot of angry letters. Yet somehow, when I'm at home, without Alan Johnson and Kenneth Clarke sitting next to me (as they so rarely do, when I'm at home), my brain overflows with urgent opinion. I barely let the panellists get a word in. And I'm always right. I always get a round of applause, from me.
Last week's was a particularly strong episode: a gripping tennis match between the contributors, Dimbleby on acid form, great stuff from the audience. Yet, throughout the first topic (which lasted a full 18 minutes; if only other programmes were so respectful of their viewers' attention span), I kept shouting: "They're bishops! Why does nobody mention the fact that they're bishops?"
The issue of the bishops blocking a benefit cap in the House of Lords was debated by everyone, on the panel and in the audience, purely in terms of whether or not they agreed with the "rebels".
This reflects the way the story has been reported and discussed generally. It is as though the country has become so atheist, it has actually forgotten that bishops are men of God and the gospels.
They are talked about as rich men with no idea that £26,000 is a fortune for some, or leftie men being typically obstructive, or naive men who don't realise the coffers are empty, but never as Christian men who are perhaps just trying to say what they think Jesus would have said.
I'm not saying I agree with them. I do think the benefits cap argument is riddled with false logic, and the surrounding debate pernicious when it encourages the working poor to blame their struggles on the non-working poorer, rather than, say, greedy banking practice and the governments that pave its way.
On the other hand, I'm as frightened as anyone by the idea of generations growing up who have never known waged income, or who might actually choose a life on welfare over an attempt to look for work. I'm not immune to a shudder at the thought of people sitting on their fat arses in front of Jeremy Kyle on the flatscreen, sharing a KFC bucket with their pit-bull half-breed, thumping their step-children and drinking my tax money.
But I'm not a bishop. It doesn't matter whether I think they're right or wrong; I think it's their job to do what the Bible tells them to do, ie look out for the needy, like the innocent children on whose behalf they raised the amendment, who might otherwise get lost.
The right-wing press that is so angry with the bishops has been complaining for years that Christianity (for better or worse, our national religion) is too weak and small a voice, that its values are not fought for. Now it's happening, they hate it.
I think the problem they've got is that the New Testament, if read as an economic tract, is innately rather socialist. It's all sharey-sharey. Jesus wanted everyone to get a bit of bread and fish. He was all about the divvying up and the helping one's neighbour. So, if Christianity is going to make itself heard on tax-and-spend policies, it has got to lean towards spreading the spoils around.
There's not much the bishops can do about that. Their hands are tied. The gospels say what they say. If their lordships wanted to support the idea that handing out bread and fish is bad for people because it demotivates them from doing their own baking and fishing, they'd really have to leave the pulpit and get a job on a tabloid.
And while the Stephen Hesters of this world, already paid 1.2 million loaves a year of arguably public bread, are being given fish factories as bonuses, the church can hardly join in with a move to reduce herring portions for the hungry. It would look ridiculous.
Similarly, last year, when the Archbishop of Canterbury warned that benefit cuts might hurt the truly weak, people raged at him for being "political" when he was just being Christian. I remember a News of the World columnist writing, at the time: "I'm always suspicious of lefties who live in palaces… yet still feel entitled to pontificate about the poor."
But he's the Archbishop of Canterbury! "Entitled to pontificate" is precisely what he is. As for worrying about the poor, that's a vocational requirement. If he only mentioned other people with palaces, it would be really weird.
You may be one of those people who think all religion is evil, and thus bishops should have no constitutional power. That's a different question. For as long as they have a voice, they are doing the only thing they can with it.
For the health of the debate, and fully to reflect the range of national opinion, it is vital that some people argue vehemently for reductions in welfare, or even the complete abolition of handouts. But it would be bloody terrifying if the church were among them.
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