The Church of England's website has a new section called Matter of Life and Debt, and has also just published a group of prayers for people afflicted by the current financial crisis.

While this "pastoral initiative" to comfort the credit-squeezed is well intentioned, the prayers, set out as flaccid scraps of free verse, actually create a sense of impoverishment – the impoverishment of the English language.

Prayer on Being Made Redundant, for example, begins with some definitions:

'Redundant' – the word says it all –

     'useless,

          unnecessary,

               without purpose,

                    surplus to requirements.'

That would certainly cheer you up if you'd just been fired. The word "redundant" is a euphemism, anyway. It says very little, particularly when the writer dives headlong into that dreary catchphrase "says it all". After another stanza listing "the sadness,/ the anger,/ the uncertainty,/ the pain", the register shifts, with "Hear me as I cry out in confusion." This secular/sacred split in the structure is indicative. The old words are tacked on for value-added traditional consolation. But they jar. The twinning of corporate bland-speak and ancient text just doesn't ring true, though it produces a moment of sad comedy in the lines "God of power/ you are strong to save" (Prayers for Those Living With Debt).

Prayer for the Current Financial Situation utters banalities we hear on the news every morning: "… across the world,/ prices rise,/ debts increase,/ banks collapse,/ jobs are taken away/ and fragile security is under threat." Yawn, pass the coffee. These generalisations don't begin to evoke or lament real human sufferings: they are nothing more than little flesh-coloured strips of journalistic Elastoplast.

The prayers we involuntarily utter in times of crisis are not, and can't be, beautifully worded: they rip their way out of us, often against our rational impulses, and they are starkly simple. Prayers presented as text, to be read and mulled over, and uttered ceremoniously in places of worship, are a different matter. They should surely be as well wrought, musical, thoughtful and resonant as poems. They should embody the sense that language is sacred.

Such prayers have existed for centuries, of course, and are more than equal to any dark night of the bank account. If the C of E wants new ones that address contemporary troubles in powerful, truthful language, perhaps it should commission a real poet to write them. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Rev Rowan Williams, comes to mind.