Speaking with characteristic moderation, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued this that the recent riots showed that ‘something in our moral ecology has gone astray’. Politicians and commentators have been ploughing a similar furrow. David Cameron has said the riots are a sign of ‘slow motion moral collapse’ in parts of the population. Ed Milliband basically agrees, though inevitably he has tried to create some clear red water (both ‘culture’ and deprivation matter).

So morality is suddenly back in vogue. It’s fair to say that this is no particular surpris; in times of social, political or economic trauma, politicians of all stripes grasp for ways to speak more deeply about the issues which we face, and understandably so. Political leaders are not a special breed of human being, immune from their own sense of outrage. They also clearly have a role in interpreting and articulating the public mood.

And it is clearly not just an emotional offer. Wisely soft peddling on the tone of indignation, the Bishop of Kingston reflected on Newsnight that there is a very important and quite practical question in view – how is character formed? How do we ensure that people become good, peaceful, industrious citizens? That’s been a challenge for every government in the history of the world.

But, for a number of reasons, we ought to handle the moralistic turn to the debate with care.

First, it’s easy to fulminate – hard to legislate. What exactly, in the light of a 'slow motion moral collapse', should the state do? Enact the golden rule, perhaps? Reflecting on the Labour Party’s reception of his unashamedly moral critique of the ‘acquisitive society’, RH Tawney quoted Ruskin: ‘They read my words, say that they are pretty, and then go on their way’. In theory, policy makers may agree with the argument but in practice, the tools available to government are few, and very often blunt.

Second, it’s tempting for people of faith, Christians in particular, to argue that having diagnosed moral degredation what we need is for society to ‘get religion’, all for the sake of the peacefulness of society. Though herself an agnostic, Katherine Birbalsingh’s article – reflecting on Tariq Jahan’s calm dignity after the loss of his son during the riots – captures the view nicely. Aside from this at least risking being perceived as self-serving, this argument does again does not make clear exactly who is supposed to do exactly what.

Third, a theological objection: in Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer analogises the God of the gaps argument for wider question of human experience. The problem being that Christian ‘solutions’ to this or that unsolved problem can be as unconvincing – or convincing – as any other. To invoke religion in only in extremis, like Churchill’s prayers at points of ‘frequent contact with danger’, is to miss the point. “Here again”, he argued, “God is no stop-gap; he must be recognised at the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognised in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin.”

Christianity does address the question of character, but it isn’t an emergency morality machine, to be pressed into service when banks collapse, MPs line their pockets, or disaffected, angry and misanthropic young people riot.

Paul Bickley is Senior Researcher at Theos.