By Martin Wroe

In this week's chart, Queen are down at No. 37. Well, not Queen, actually, but The Queen. Elizabeth Regina.

Despite weekly airplay in naves nationwide and 40-odd bishops plugging her, the Queen is heading out of the charts with a bullet. Her retro Anglican grooves covered once too often, her fading star is blinking faintly between streetwise Muslim businessman G.K. Noon (in at No.38) and those globe-trotting Hinduja brothers (climbing to No. 36), who must be disappointed that their influence on Peter Mandelson failed to blast them higher up the list.

Another chart golden oldie heading a once-thriving religious brand is also on the way down, though John Paul II's international sales keep him in the Top Ten (at 8), pipping the coolest mystic in town, the Dalai Lama (at 9) but behind the increasingly looney tunes of the Archbishop of Canterbury (6), who now has less religious influence than Cherie Booth (4).

SUSPICIOUS? Well, if you believe The God List, broadcast on the UK's Channel 4, Britain's most influential cleric is a sometime purveyor of radio God slots – when most people are watching breakfast telly, listening to Chris Evans, feeding the kids or still asleep. Rabbi Lionel Blue (No. 5), argues New Age writer William Bloom, one of the multi-faith panel whose votes decided the God List, "touches how we behave. After we listen to him we behave better."

Really? When – and how – did Gallup measure that?

Lists have long been a media fetish in the postmodern media swamp, especially those featuring the rich, famous and powerful. But measuring the social influence of people's spirituality is a bizarre attempt to scientifically compare the incomparable. It's like asking if prayer works, or if that grainy photo really contains the outline of an apparition. You either believe or you don't.

For a start, The God Listers have fallen into the trap of assuming that people with a media platform are life-transformers. The List is perforated with celebrities who "influence" a mass of people in a marginal way – Oprah Winfrey in at 16, Steven Spielberg down at 19, Delia Smith climbing to 48. But often the people who really change the course of history are those who influence a few people – maybe only one – in a seismic way. And they're invariably anonymous, often on purpose.

A friend of mine gave up a TV career in Britain to work with street orphans in South Africa. The God Listers won't have heard of him but his influence among scores of children is incalculable. If it really were computable on some heavenly harddrive, I'd bet on him being more influential than Sir Cliff Richard, in today's hit parade at 14.

WHERE THE LIST is closer to the truth is in suggesting that the most influential religious figures today may be politicians like Gordon Brown (No. 2) and Tony Blair (this week's No. 1), whose genuine faith informs the way they wield temporal power.

For all the talk of Brown being desperate for Blair's job, the Chancellor seems to have realized that history offers a bigger job than being a mere Prime Minister.

This card-carrying socialist son of the manse wants to change the destinies of millions of the worlds poorest people. And unlike the majority of God List entries, you can actually measure the influence of a Chancellor working with a religious mindset. For example the Child Poverty Action Group have claimed that Treasury reforms to the tax and benefits systems have lifted 1.2m children out of poverty.

That's influence – and it's not confined to the UK. Brown's zeal for tackling global poverty, first by cancelling the debts of poor countries, was complemented in this weeks budget with tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies who invest in "preventable" diseases which kill 11 million people annually. That's influence.

But measuring the social impact of a devout politician is easier than measuring the "belief-to-influence ratio" of most mortals. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said Jesus Christ, which is about as good a yardstick as you will find.

INSTITUTIONAL religion is losing power as fast as the rest of us are losing our religion, and if many of us remain spiritually quizzical, The God List is right to suggest vicars and rabbis now wield less mass influence than politicians. But is a radio rabbi to the chattering classes more influential than the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen?

Rabbi Lionel Blue says it is precisely because he's not associated with the religious corporations that he is placed so high: "I'm not involved in missionism, proselytising or selling Brand X of any religion. I'm outside the institution."

Doubtless, but he gets so high on this strange list because he is on a radio station that the God Listers tune into. Maybe that's why they have Yasmin Alibhai Brown at 20, a Muslim who writes for The Independent, while Yusuf Islam – once the musician Cat Stevens – barely scrapes in at 49, when he is responsible for Britain's first Islamic schools. But then he hasn't got a newspaper column.

Perhaps the God Listers are bound to fall back on media influence because it is impossible to measure the true influence of the devout – maybe the more impossible, the more likely it is genuine. It's the celebrity of the Dalai Lama not his prayer which gets him in the top ten – after all, the list is otherwise devoid of nuns, monks, clergy and lay people who day in day out may wield extraordinary spiritual influence, simply because they pray.

'To clasp hands in prayer,' said the theologian Karl Barth, ' is the beginning of an uprising against the world.'

The devout will always be called to do their good with humility, to do it privately, for angels alone to enter on spreadsheets. The world, says an old Jewish proverb, is supported by 36 righteous people. No one knows who they are, they don't even know each other. It is not known if they are on the God List. They say their prayers, raise their kids, do their good and keep quiet.

I wonder if one of them is Elizabeth Brown, the Chancellor's mother.

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© Martin Wroe 2001