I wrote to the BBC to complain about their intention to "engage" the audience on religious matters. I reproduce their reply below, even though it is probably just a standard response.
As a public service broadcaster the BBC has a responsibility to meet the needs of all audiences. Over 75% of the adult audience claim some religious allegiance (2001 census).
Much of the BBC’s output approaches the world from a secular, non-religious point of view. A minority of the BBC’s output has specifically religious content – some of it celebratory and affirming, some of it journalistic and scrutinising – while other programmes, such as Jonathan Miller’s Brief History of Disbelief, have addressed atheism directly.
On Friday 13 May the BBC Governors held a seminar, attended by Mark Thompson, senior executives and a panel of invited experts, to discuss the BBC’s religious and belief programming. The BBC has a public service responsibility to provide religious programming. The purpose of this seminar was not to find ways of increasing religious output, but to discuss how the BBC can best meet this commitment by providing programmes of the highest quality. The seminar also explored how different faiths and beliefs could be reflected across a range of genres.
If indeed they are being honest when they say that there will be no increase in religious programming, then I am content. However I question their reliance on the 2001 census information, which claims that 75% of us have some form of religious allegiance. If this were true, the churches would be full to overflowing. That they are not therefore, begs the question of whether reliance on such data is a reasonable thing to do. Far more likely, is that those who claimed some form of religious allegiance do so when filling in such forms out of habit and indeed do attend church at "hatchings, matchings and despatchings". Such people may be nominally be religious, but how religious are they when, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses call at their door to bring them the word of the Lord? So while the majority of these "religious" people do not wish to have the word brought to them on their doorstep or in the shopping mall (watch to see peoples’ reactions to street preachers and you will see my point), why should we we therefore believe that they wish to have it beamed into their homes courtesy of the BBC? I suspect that the majority do not.
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