What does it mean to be Christian in this country? Does it mean left-wing? Guardian-reader? Because that's what the debate on a benefits cap appeared to be implying this week. Until, that is, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, intervened on Wednesday.
The fact that he wrote in the Daily Mail made his position even clearer. The Mail had been wailing for days about the sheer effrontery, in its opinion, of anyone saying that £26,000 in benefits was potentially not enough.
The argument in the House of Lords against the coalition's proposal took significant contributions from the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, The Right Reverend John Packer. Bishop Packer argued that to limit the benefits one household can receive "cannot be right".
Mail journalist James Chapman tweeted: "Bishop of Ripon & Leeds tells Lords: "Jesus wouldn't vote Tory". I paraphrase, but only a little bit."
Despite a benefits cap being popular with the public, Bishop Packer told his fellow Peers that: "Christianity requires us to think most of those that have no voice... Children don't answer YouGov polls."
No, they don't, but the working people who pay the taxes which provide the benefits do, and they would rather that work paid more than welfare. A cap plays well with the public. Bishop Packer was out of step with popular opinion.
George Carey also produced several striking phrases. He said that Britain's debt, which hit £1 trillion this week, is the "greatest moral scandal" facing the country. He also claimed the welfare system is rewarding "fecklessness and irresponsibility".
Thus he sounded like a Conservative. After a few days in which it seemed the Church of England was firmly with Labour and the Lib Dems on benefits, Carey metaphorically adorned himself from head to toe in Tory blue.
So how would Jesus vote? It seems fair to say that no-one really knows. What he actually said, and what he actually thought, are a matter of conjecture. The gospels were all written decades after his death, in a time when few people could read or write, and so didn't keep a diary. There are many gospels other than the four in the Bible. And a large chunk of the New Testament is written by St Paul, who never met Jesus. Had the two men sat down for a chat, what would have been the outcome? Would they have even liked each other? It's one of the great imponderables of history.
A Christian approach, however, as most people understand it, would involve kindness. It would involve helping those in need, and not passing by on the other side.
Yet when it comes to benefits, the phrase "killing with kindness" comes to mind. People in need of money have been given it. But the state, in many cases, has failed to provide a proper follow up.
Last summer, for example, one third of pupils leaving primary school in England (183,000) did so without having reached the expected level in reading, writing, and mathematics. Literacy can help to pull people out of poverty. But after 13 years of government by the Labour Party, which is supposed to be on the side of the less fortunate members of society, tens of thousands of kids were approaching their teenage years without the basic building blocks they will need to find a job.
That's one of the reasons why it's virtually impossible to enter a coffee shop in London, or a well-known food and sandwich chain, and be served by a British person. A London bus company recently held a recruitment day in Poland looking for drivers after, it says, exhausting its options here - and with UK unemployment at a seventeen-year high; just under 2.7 million. You really couldn't make it up.
It would be better if ideology was stripped from the benefits debate; that it became neither Guardian nor Mail, religious nor secular. People need a good education to get a job, and they need a job to give them the satisfaction of earning their own living. Dependency is disabling. Work provides a sense of purpose. It's simple common sense.
The Eurozone debt crisis has led to a 'technocratic' government in Italy. It's not political, but managerial. And so it's tempting to wonder what a technocratic government here would do about welfare. Would a dispassionate administrator think it a good idea that benefits paid more than work in some cases? It seems unlikely, to say the least.