The Church of England is expected to advise Christians to vote for parties that are in favour of scrapping Britain's nuclear deterrent, file photo

The Church of England is preparing to publish an extraordinary document advising Christians on voting in the general election.

The document – which will provoke yet another row with the Government – suggests Trident should be scrapped, proposes more EU integration and questions parts of the Coalition’s austerity programme.

It claims to offer advice for the country’s 30million Christians on how to ‘approach the general election’ in May. Billed as a ‘letter from the Church of England’s House of Bishops’, it is ‘addressed to all members of the Church’.

Last night Conservative MPs said the ‘manifesto’ was littered with errors and questioned the wisdom of the Church intervening in the political debate so close to an election.

The bishops insist it is ‘not a shopping list of policies we would like to see, it is a call for the new direction that we believe our political life ought to take’.

But it goes on to offer commentary on a string of political issues. One of the most controversial sections is on Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident, which the Tories say they want to retain but others, including the resurgent Scottish Nationalists, want scrapped.

The document says: ‘The sheer scale of indiscriminate destructive power represented by nuclear weapons such as Trident was only justifiable, if at all, by appeal to the principle of mutually assured destruction. Shifts in the global strategic realities mean that the traditional arguments for nuclear deterrence need re-examining.’ The document will also propose more European integration.

‘After the Second World War, the nations of Europe sought to rebuild for prosperity through a shared determination that never again would global neighbours resort to mass slaughter,’ it says.

‘English churchmen worked tirelessly to promote understanding and cooperation … That history is not an argument for the structures and institutions of the EU as they now exist. But it is an enduring argument for continuing to build structures of trust and cooperation between the nations of Europe.’

The Church is also expected to recommend even closer integration within the European Union, file photo

Conservative MP Conor Burns, pictured, criticised the Church's intervention in the election campaign

On the economy, the Church says unemployment ‘has not risen as high as was predicted’. In fact, it has not risen under the Coalition, falling by 596,000 since 2010, with 1.75million more people entering work.

The document also says Britain has ‘seen the burgeoning of in-work poverty’ – another questionable claim, since the latest figures show that the proportion of people in in-work poverty is the same as in 2010.

The document claims that ‘the greatest burdens of austerity have not been born [sic] by those with the broadest shoulders’. But the Treasury has published figures suggesting that the richest 10 per cent of households are contributing most to deficit reduction. The document does praise some government policies including its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product on foreign aid as a way to mitigate ‘grotesque inequalities of wealth and power’ between rich and poor countries.

Conservative MP Conor Burns said: ‘It is deeply disturbing that the Church appears to be entering the political arena based on a series of clear misrepresentations of facts.