The archbishops' open letter is as bland and opaque as milk. The mid-point of the campaign coincides with the Seventh Sunday of Easter, which falls just after the Ascension and before a Bank Holiday. Of the 65 per cent of British adults who call themselves Christians, fewer than a million go to Sunday church. When the young opt increasingly to live without God and the old to die without him, Get Relevant becomes the eleventh commandment. Fulfilling that precept demands more, however, than advice to vote for election candidates only after examining their 'personal attitudes and moral outlook'.
Private credo is the most dubious criterion imaginable.
You might as well choose taste in ties or density of dandruff on candidates' suit collars. Personal faith is less a guarantor of decent public policy than a clanging contra-indicator. Among Tories, Liam Fox's prayers to abolish abortion are eccentrically chilling, while Ann Widdecombe's sinlessness translates into a wish to incarcerate non-criminals. What pleases God may look less sanctified to an asylum-seeker or, indeed, to an archbishop. That wouldn't be surprising.