Leading article: Unholy rows

The more their congregations shrink, the more turbulent the lives the clergy of the Established Church, or so it seems.

Recently, we had the so-called "spitting vicar" who was forced to deny intimidating his parishioners. Now we hear the boot is more often on the other foot and that parishioners are "bullying" and attacking priests. According to the trade union, Unite, vicars routinely experience abuse from the laity. It seems a long away from the world of EF Benson novels in which the only torture the vicar experiences is the tedium of an overlong afternoon fete. But then, that world – if it existed – has vanished – along with the mythical Anglican "spinsters" whom John Major fondly imagined cycling through the mist to matins.

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Or have those same spinsters not vanished at all but simply become more aggressive in keeping with the spirit of the times, and instead of meekly murmuring thanks for an unsatisfactory service, march up the incumbent and give him a bloody nose?

It may be useful to note that our churches were once regularly the scenes of brawls and fisticuffs, especially over points of ritual.

In one East End church in the 1860s, parishioners infuriated by their High Church vicar, Bryan King, "took possession of the choir stalls and interrupted the singing with hisses and shouts, until in the middle of the service the clergyman fell down in a fit and was carried apparently lifeless out of the church amidst laughter, shouts, and execrations".

The culture of decorum in church, in other words, is fairly recent – though this may come as cold comfort for clerical victims of angry or disappointed lay people.