They should, perhaps, have seen it coming. Christians have been speaking out in public ever since the Pentecostal gift of tongues demolished the language barrier and spread the good word around the world. And was it not from the aisles and pews of St Mary the Virgin in Putney beside the Thames that Cromwell and the Levellers went back and forth in 1647, ranting and praying, on universal suffrage, God's place in civil society and what should be done about the King?

Heckling is now considered rather bad form in ecclesiastical society. Peter Tatchell tried it, spectacularly, from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral, when he interrupted the Archbishop's Easter sermon in 1998. But he is a radical, and radicals tend to trample on ceremony. If a radical gay bishop such as Gene Robinson already has the floor, a well-mannered congregation might not expect interruption. It reckoned without the stentorian call of a biker clutching his helmet: “Go back, go back. Repent, repent, repent”.

What should be the proper Christian response? Manhandling the heckler into the street, as though he was attending a Labour party conference, is hardly on. Nor can the church wardens be ordered into a rugby tackle. Putney's vicar rose to the occasion. Hymn number 4, he announced: Thine Be the Glory. But he could have called for Be Gone, Unbelief or Be Still and Know that I Am God. He could have ordered the clamorous ringing of bells, or lit incense and bundled the man away in the clouds. But true biblical repartee would thunder out imprecations from Proverbs 26:4, “Do not answer a fool as his folly deserves”, or Ecclesiastes 7:5, “It is better to listen to the rebukes of the wise than the songs of fools”.