Christian MPs aren’t ‘devout’. They’re self-confessed sinners

There are a couple of predictable elements to the reporting of sex scandals involving a public figure, and both were in evidence when it was revealed that Stephen Crabb, MP, had sent ‘pretty outrageous’ messages to  a woman he’d turned down for a job in his parliamentary office. When it came to the reporting, Mr Crabb was duly described as a ‘married father of two’, then as a ‘devout Christian’, which instantly raises the suggestion: ‘hypocrite’. So, you establish the individual’s respectability before proceeding with a story that suggests the contrary.

Quite what a devout Christian means in this context is hard to establish: it may mean clean-living or it may mean simply going to church, something that, a generation ago, would not have occasioned comment, being just normal. Similarly, any Catholic who goes to mass on Sundays is automatically billed as a ‘devout’ Catholic – which seems a bit cheap; personally, I’d raise the bar a bit higher, and require at least daily mass-going as standard, pilgrimages, prayer, lots of feeding the hungry, and pretty rigorous fast and abstinence during Lent (standard practice for Orthodox Christians),  plus ideally charity in judging others.