In a hysterical, imploding, raucous exchange in the House of Commons two weeks ago, there was a showdown between the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commissioner Sir Stuart Bell and several Members of Parliament.

The background:

The Church Commissioners, headed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, submitted a proposed housing development scheme invloving 2,000 new homes in West Sussex. Their reason?  To “meet local housing needs” … and make money.  Local MPs were upset to say the least. Especially because Williams had spent the exact same day berating lecturing, according to ReligiousIntelligence, “calling for people to rediscover their responsibility for the environment and insisting that engaging in “apparently small-scale action” in “personal habits and local possibilities” was vital to the nation’s health.

“When we believe in transformation at the local and personal level, we are laying the surest foundations for change at the national and international level,” he said. People, he added, are “dehumanized” by buying things. Apparently massive quantities of land have their own loophole.

I have reconstructed the fight in Commons here, in a mix of hearsay, direct quotes, and inference. Feel free to read the rest of this with a British accent (in your head, of course — you’re at work, remember?):

The speakers:

Mr. Nick Gibb (Conservative and  Member of Parliament for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Sir Stuart Bell (Second Church Estates Commissioner, a Commission headed by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Cantebury)

The conversation:

Mr. Gibb: What is the size of the church’s agricultural holdings?

Sir Bell: Church Commissioners hold over “109,000 acres of English farmland, spread across 44 estates and over 300 farms.”

Mr Gibb: But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Williams, “wants more food to be grown locally and has attacked organisations driven solely by the desire to make money. Is it not therefore paradoxical that the Church Commissioners, which he chairs, wants to concrete over 3,000 acres of prime agricultural land to the west of Chalcraft lane in my constituency?  When challenged, the Commissioners say they want to build on that land because they are obliged to maximise the amount of money they make. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were a politician, would it not be fair to say that he says one thing but does another?” I find this worrying.

Sir Bell: Is is “always pleasant when the Archbishop of Canterbury is cited in the House of Commons. I am sure that he does not wish to be a politician and I would urge him not to be one.”

Members of Parliament, standing: “He is!”  “He is a Member!” “Shame!”

For a moment, I thought they were about to break into song and anoint him Pirate King. But back to the action…

Sir Bell: “The archbishop is a Member of the House of Commons now, is he?”

Members of Parliament, shouting: “He is in the Lords.”

Sir Bell: “He is a Member in Parliament.” I am “being diverted” from the matter at hand. “We have a legal duty to our beneficiaries. On this occasion, we accept that we have met some controversy in his constituency, but we have not to be distracted from our fiduciary duty. As the member are “in an enlightened mood, may I cite the scriptures? In Ezekiel, it states: ‘In controversy they shall stand in judgment…and they shall keep my laws and statutes’. We propose to keep the laws and statutes of Parliament that have been conferred upon the Church Commissioners.”

The conclusion:

The Archibishop and Co. are using scripture, “fiduciary duty,” and, well, God and money, to defend lecturing their constituents about living green while selling off millions in assets and building massive modern developments on green fields.

The actors leave the stage, practicing their best “silly walks.”