Received wisdom suggests that you would not expect a vicar to disrupt Divine Worship. Now, anybody who’s worked with the clergy up close will know that in this case, as in so many areas, received wisdom is wrong. Still, there was shock in news outlets and on social media this week when a gaggle of Christians, including clerics, disrupted Evensong at Chichester in the name of climate action.

Those clergy involved think they’re the children of the revolution when actually they’re the Primrose League

Their general propensity for mischief aside, there should be absolutely no surprise at all that clergy were involved in this very particular protest. Clerics are predominately older and predominately middle class. Their average age, their average level of education, their voting patterns and their general outlook on life puts them square in the catch zone for climate radicalism. So it was with the Chichester protest: white and wizened raisin-like heads peeped out from behind brightly coloured signs. On one level it’s rather sweet: like watching an elderly couple hold hands in public or those people in their eighties who discover skateboarding.

What makes this different and, frankly, quite annoying, is the implied religious superiority of the protestors. The implicit suggestion of ‘Look we’re like Jesus, in the temple! Socking it to the man!’

Except they’re not, are they. They’re doing the safest sort of protest in the safest sort of place in order to affirm the safest and most widely held bien pensant sort of opinion. That opinion – that the earth is, in climate terms, buggered – may yet be proved to be right; I suspect it probably will. But quite what the relative truth of what they have to affirm and the desire to ruin other people’s days have to do with one another is beyond me. I’m furious about any number of things, but I hope I’m sufficiently aware of my own relative unimportance to realise that ruining ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’ isn’t going to achieve anything.

In fact, there is a reading of this which places it squarely in the tradition of Anglican reactionism. It is a demand for a bypassing of democratic systems, a clamour for special attention and a reassertion of middle-class ownership of public spaces. Those clergy involved think they’re the children of the revolution and actually they’re the Primrose League.

The motivations are interesting, not least because I am sure those involved would dispute this analysis of their actions. Perhaps it’s a case of making up for lost time or manifesting a youth they never actually had. Every wrinkly progressive will tell you they were once on the barricades, but the truth is that most old Christians were once young squares. Fundamentally, I don’t really object to them making an exhibition of themselves: no fool like an old fool after all. What is a problem, and specifically the issue with disrupting worship, is that it breeds a sense of moral superiority. This states that the chosen cause of the individuals puts them above the ordinary norms of society, or in this case above the worship of almighty God. Read like this, it becomes a classic act straight out of the Baby Boomer playbook: ‘the rules I have made and set for others shouldn’t apply to me’. Ruining a Church of England service in particular has the hint of the 60s wild child about it, shades of the film If…. But in reality it is about as radical as going for a trip around the Med with Swan Hellenic.

I noted that much of the congregation, all of the choir and almost all of the clergy officiating were in fact younger than the protesting vicars. There is, as we say, a sermon in that. I am sure that the protestors wanted them, and us, to look round and say: ‘yes thank you, you’re right, you latter day Simeons and Annas!’ The problem is that plenty of younger clergy have spent our whole worshipping lives beholden to the faddish whims of these people. That’s why we’re in the mess we are.

This isn’t just an internal Church point. My generation is the one that will have to deal with the horrors of climate change and – as with almost everything else we’re set to inherit – we’ve largely made our peace with everything being worse than it was. I love and respect older clerics, and indeed owe them much. This applies in particular, I should say, to those of a progressive hue, who, at their best, are more inclined to generosity of spirit than some others. But I have a plea: spare us the organically sourced sackcloth and artisanal ashes. If you actually want to help future generations why not sell your massive house at half the market rate? Then we’ll be duly grateful I promise.

There is, however, some wisdom which might benefit any would-be protestors. Next time, why not just go to Evensong: that is something truly radical. If you really want to commit to a belief system and a set of actions that will change the world then admitting that you might be part of both the problem and the solution – that ‘we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep’ –  twice a day, every day might not be a bad place to start.