We must not mock the afflicted, according to the Christian teaching of my childhood, but the temptation to mock the Church of England, and particularly the Archbishop of Canterbury, in their various afflictions, is almost irresistible.

Last week Dr Rowan Williams told a clutch of theologians at 10 Downing Street that it would be a good idea to teach Philip Pullman’s bestselling children’s trilogy in religious education classes in schools.

Apparently, the archbishop has recently enjoyed the stage adaptation very much and he thinks His Dark Materials could address the “inadequacies of some religious education courses which only taught about religious festivals”.

It is impossible not to laugh. This is an exquisite example of the silliness and trendy opportunism that inspired Peter Simple’s comic creation in The Daily Telegraph of Dr Spaceley-Trellis, the go-ahead Bishop of Stretchford, the Pooter of the Anglican Götterdämmerung.

Of course it would be a very good thing if schoolchildren (and adults as well) were encouraged to read Pullman’s masterpiece (although its massive sales suggest that not much encouragement is necessary). I read each of the books aloud to my son, as they appeared, and then more than once again for myself, and they are dazzling.

It is hard to see them as children’s literature only. Their intellectual scope is vast, just as their mythic appeal is profound. Nonetheless (and also because of that), children love them. But for an archbishop, no matter how go-ahead, to recommend them as texts for religious education lessons is daft.

“In a very real sense,” as Dr Spaceley-Trellis would say, these books are a powerful attack against organised religion and against the idea of God. The deity turns out to be lying enfeebled and ancient, and is in fact killed.

The trilogy has rather understandably outraged many Christians; the Association of Christian Teachers condemned it as “shameless blasphemy” and The Catholic Herald said it is “fit for the bonfire”.

I myself did not read it that way. But one need not take such a simple-minded view as that to agree that the trilogy is far from Christian-church-friendly, and absolutely unbelieving in the sense the old-fashioned Christians were taught to believe.

“I only hope,” said the archbishop “that teachers are equipped to tease out what in Pullman’s world is and is not reflective of Christian teaching as Christians understand it.”

Some hope. One can only wonder what planet he inhabits. There can be few teachers equipped for such a difficult intellectual exercise — these are complex books and to judge them critically demands a wide knowledge of literature, theology and history.

Teachers, let alone their pupils, know extraordinarily little of the most basic Christian doctrine. And, in any case, Christians, as in Dr Williams’s own church, are deeply divided on almost every aspect of Christian doctrine, particularly on the priesthood, on sex and on marriage.

There is something deeply depressing about Anglican squabbles about homosexuals, as if with all sorrows of the world, it is to be this that finally divides the church. These days you can believe almost anything, or nothing, and still call yourself a Christian, an Anglican. One can hardly help sympathising with religious education teachers for sticking to a few fun festivals.