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The revolt by bishops in the House of Lords against welfare changes is unusual because they don't often vote as a bloc on controversial matters or on anything else. They are certainly not a monolithic force for social conservatism. If you look at the debates on civil partnership and gay equality more generally, there are always bishops voting both ways, reflecting the deep divisions within the church on this matter. In part this is because there are seldom many of them around to vote. There is always a "duty bishop" and a backup for a session. But most days, that is the only representation of the 25 entitled to sit in the Lords. None of them sit on party benches. A bishop from the provinces will feel an obligation to represent his part of the world, which few other members of the House of Lords would. The classic example of this was the bishop of Durham under Margaret Thatcher, David Jenkins, who spoke up for the miners during their strike. But it's notable that the attack on the government's welfare proposals has been led by the bishops of Ripon and Leicester. These are not places whose concerns often trouble policy-makers in London. Although the bishops in their ermine can appear fantastically out of touch, they also have jobs that bring them into closer contact with poverty and deprivation than almost anyone else in the chamber. They have behind them the apparatus of the church's social welfare agencies, whose opinions they will often represent. The influence of the Children's Society is clear in this revolt: it is obvious that the bishops have been entirely influenced by the idea that they must protect children from sliding further into poverty. The impulse to defend children is also a large part of the bishops' defence of asylum seekers. Even in the debates leading up to the Iraq war, there were bishops whose main concern was with children suffering: the bishop of Manchester said then that "a greater number of people, mainly children, die every day – yesterday, today and tomorrow – because of the lack of clean water in this world than the number tragically killed in New York on 11 September of last year. Every day more children die than the number of those killed in that one event." But even then opinion was divided. Most, if not all, of the bishops were entirely taken in by Alastair Campbell's dodgy dossier, and assumed that Saddam Hussein did have biological and chemical weapons. The bishop of London was cautiously in favour of preventive war under such circumstances, though most others were not. There really is nothing to compare with this united front on welfare reform – unless it be the bishops' resistance to Israeli settlements on the West Bank. But on that question, their votes don't count. Today, they may go down as the men who resisted government pressure to the last. Next month, they get to decide in synod whether their progressive principles extend to having women sit alongside them.

This welfare bill has united bishops like never before | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

This is what the Lords used to be so good at. Now it's full of grasping Blairite apparatchiks, there's barely any point having it at all.

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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.

Attacking the church is a cheap shot | Victoria Coren | Comment is free | The Observer

Well okay, but if we're taking the gospels as our authority, then "render unto Caesar" surely means that the Bishops shouldn't be participating in government in the first place?

It's dead easy starting a religion (well, right up until you get crucified), it's the poor schleps who come afterwards and have to try to reconcile your vague, good-natured sentiments into a coherent whole that have the hard time of it.

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Yes, the whole argument is weird. They've always been socialist mvts within churches (pretres ouvriers: Prêtre ouvrier - Wikipédia) because, indeed, a lot of the stuff in the NT can be interpreted as "socialist". Although the right also has a point when it notes that it's mostly about charity i.e. voluntary helping rather than aggressive, state-imposed redistribution.

But trying to argue that the Church(es) are bound to follow the NT? What a weird argument. They never did. Otherwise, they'd self-dissolve. All they ever were and ever are is a mixture of people's need + embedding themselves into the power structure.

The rest is just PR.

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I dunno, I think it's sufficiently open to interpretation. It's not like the CoE does anything obviously unchristian like burning heretics at the stake.

Even my argument that Jesus said not to meddle in state affairs can be turned round. You're not supposed to meddle in state affairs, but if the state asks you for your pov as a Christian you can hardly tell it to fuck off.

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