If there’s another church in East Yorkshire dedicated to St Breville, the patron saint of toasted snacks, then we haven’t heard about it. Steve, our vicar, is a fine and decent man, always ready to offer a helping hand or a willing ear. His moral probity is beyond question - earning him the nickname, around Whimsey, of ‘Stainless’ Steve. He’s a model of modesty too: genuinely surprised that his parishioners want to have anything to do with him. He tries to see the best in everyone, a policy that’s so far had mixed results. "Being a Satanist doesn't automatically make you a bad person", he confides to the churchwarden, as he prises out the nail that somebody’s driven straight through a sheep’s heart and into the oak door of his church. "Actually”, the churchwarden replies, “I think you'll find that it does".
Steve bites his lip in vexation. He’s finding life in the 21st century unnecessarily complex; whenever he feels he’s got the hang of it, the rules seem to change. The Church lurches erratically between laughable anachronisms and unseemly haste in jumping on the latest barmy bandwagon. Where the Church used to provide unequivocal moral guidance (“Repent… or face the fires of hell”) it now offers the merest slap on the wrist to those who transgress. When we swore an oath in court, we used to place a respectful hand on the Bible. But now, according to a new directive from Canterbury, it seems that an Argos catalogue will do. The Bible itself isn’t seen as infallible any more. Instead of taking every word as gospel truth, we treat the Good Book like an a la carte menu - picking out the tasty bits we like, while leaving the tough, indigestible chunks on the side of the plate. After all, the world has moved on a bit since Jesus beguiled and perplexed his followers with parables. The Bible still offers the last word on big issues such as love, honesty and redemption. But God has been inconclusively silent about many of the issues which engage us today, such as the efficacy of the latest diet regime and the outrageous price of replica football strips.
The Church used to take a lead; now, loathe to upset anyone, it meekly follows. Acknowledging ‘the sanctity of indiscriminate shagging’, for example, isn't giving the youngsters much guidance. People have to make their own decisions today about what’s right and what’s wrong. “It’s not like the commandments were written on tablets of stone”, says Steve. “Actually”, says his churchwarden, “I think you’ll find that they were”.
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