Christians and other religious people seem to be known for their willingness to take offence. That’s what religious people are, by and large: people who get offended about cartoons in newspapers on behalf of their divinities. People you have to tip-toe around.

You might be aware of the stage show called Jerry Springer the Opera. It is, if you weren't aware of it, scheduled to be performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2009.

It is a vile piece and not really that good - I saw some of it when it was shown on the BBC. The premise of the opera is that the freaks (trans-sexuals, transvestites, deviants - the usual line-up) of the Jerry Springer show get translated into hell, with all the characters taking on second roles as Satan, Mary, God and so on. And so, among other things, Montel, the guy who likes to wear a nappy and soil himself, becomes Jesus. True to the original, the opera has some incredibly bad language (legend has it that there are 8,000 swear words in the script!). It has some satirical component to it I suppose (I mean, the whole Jerry Springer thing needed to be taken to the cleaners, didn't it?) but it isn’t that funny and it isn’t that clever (Bonnie Greer called it a 'twenty minute idea').

When the show toured Britain recently it was picketed by various Christian groups. There was also an attempt to have it banned under blasphemy laws.

Of course, with a piece like this which offends religious people, liberal commentators blather on about what a great work of art it is, and how important it is that it be shown.  The issue of censorship is bandied about as if it is the great cause.

It is fascinating - and we should say it more often - how often the pieces that cause the most controversy are actually not great works. D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, is plainly not a successful novel as a novel. Catherine Brelliat's Romance was just not a very good film. Shock and offence can be cheap artistic tricks which compromise art as art.

But is the right Christian response to get outraged and to protest? Should Christians organize a mass demonstration outside the Opera House? Our Lord is being terribly besmirched by this tawdry show. Certainly that is the right Muslim response, it seems - think of the reaction to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

But Christians are not those who assert their rights in this way. Surely we don’t want to participate in the protest/victimhood discourse that in the end is so harmful to our community? Surely we can speak about the hurt and (more to the point) the terrible danger of blasphemy without using the same gestures that people use to get a public hearing these days?

I think it actually damages the cause of the gospel when we pose as just another protest group in society that is making noise for its own space. If we are not convincing in showing that what we are arguing for is not the good of our own sector of the community but the good of the community as a whole, then our gospel becomes just more white noise.