Director General of the BBC explains his obsession with religion, and why he privileges it

Editorial by Terry Sanderson

Although the headlines majored on the BBC’s fearful relationship with Islam, there was another point hidden in the BBC Director General’s speech to the Theos Christian think tank that is just as disturbing.

Those of us who have wondered why there is such a ridiculous excess of religion on the BBC now have the answer. It is because Mark Thompson, an enthusiastic Catholic, wants it.

Mr Thompson is a great proselytiser for his faith in the mould of Lord Reith, who thought the BBC was “the nation’s church”. And, of course, the BBC gives him a very big pulpit to preach from – one that reaches into just about every home in the country and which we all have to pay for.

Thompson told an event organised by Theos, that there are now more religious programmes on BBC TV and Radio than there has been for decades, whereas coverage has almost disappeared from ITV.

In his speech, Mr Thompson said: “My view is that there is a difference between the position of Christianity, which I believe should be central to the BBC’s religion coverage and widely respected and followed. What Christian identity feels like to the broad population is a little bit different to people for whom their religion is also associated with an ethnic identity which has not been fully integrated. There’s no reason why any religion should be immune from discussion, but I don’t want to say that all religions are the same. To be a minority I think puts a slightly different outlook on it.”

Mr Thompson also made the statement that “over the next twenty years, the demographers expect the number of Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all to grow as a proportion of the world population. The groups they expect to decline most are those who profess no religion or who define themselves as atheists." Religion, he tells us, is back.

Yes, Mr Thompson, religion is back, but not in the way you would have us believe. It is certainly crazier and more violent than it has been for a long time and there is no way we can ignore its terrifying extremists, but there is no popular revival of religious belief – certainly not in Britain. A Home Office Citizenship Survey in 2001 showed that when respondents were asked: “what says something important about you if you were describing yourself?” religion came just ninth in the list of priorities.

Even more significantly, four times as many thought religion was not important to their identity as those who did. The idea that most people’s lives are motivated by religion is simply not true, as most of us accept from our own experience, and from the decades of declining church attendance.

The most comprehensive and trusted study of religious statistics, the annual Religious Trends predicts that by 2040 50% of the population will identify itself as non-religious (up from 22% in 2001). Similarly church membership will have dropped from 7% of the population in 2001 to 5% in 2040 (with only 2% actually attending services – and most of them over 65). These are conservative estimates, and the reality is likely to be a whole lot worse for the churches. Certainly Islam is growing, and is predicted to grow further – from 1.8% of the population to 3.6%, but that will be almost entirely from reproduction and immigration, not because vast numbers of people are converting to Islam.

The only group that is growing – and growing rapidly – are those who say either they have no religion or that they don’t believe in God. Read this article for the evidence. Yet this is the group that hardly gets a mention on the BBC.

And as for Mr Thompson’s claim that there is a mighty audience for religious programmes on TV and Radio, I would draw his attention to a survey by Ofcom, the media regulator, which showed that religious programmes were not greatly valued by viewers – only 5% found them to be of any personal significance, and when you look at the charts of actual viewing figures, religion hardly registers. Other research from Social Capital showed that in homes that had access to digital channels, there was an almost total flight from terrestrial channels showing religious programmes.”

In his speech, Mr Thompson said: “The fact that the same licence-fee is levied from every household means that all audiences are of equal value to us. There is no specially favoured demographic, no premium market.”

Oh give us a break! A few sentences later he says: “I believe that the BBC has maintained the daily and weekly presence of religion on its services with more consistency and commitment over decades than any other British media organization, and also more than most of the rest of what you could call public Britain. This year we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Daily Service. Songs of Praise, Choral Evensong, Thought For The Day, Prayer For The Day: the reflection of the cycle of the Christian week and the Christian year is there for anyone who wants to find it. So too – though admittedly less prominently – reflections of some of the key festivals of the UK’s other major faiths. It’s hard to square any of this with the idea of the BBC as the anti-God squad.”

I remember meeting Mr Thompson at the BBC some years ago in connection with the NSS’s campaign to open up Thought for the Day to non-religious voices. He appeared to listen sympathetically to our point of view, but, of course, nothing happened. It is clear now that for all his vague promises, he had no intention of doing anything about the situation. In fact, this speech shows he holds non-believers in contempt.

However, these latest revelations answer a question that we at the National Secular Society has been asking for years: why, when all the research shows that hardly anyone wants to watch it, is the BBC absolutely awash with religion, particularly Christianity? It is all down to Mr Thompson (and, as regular readers of our weekly newsletter will know, his sidekick Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4, see here

It is disgraceful that such zealots should have their hands so tightly round the throat of the BBC and use their positions to promote their own personal beliefs at licence-paters’ expense. The NSS now intends to make an official complaint to the board of directors of the BBC about Mr Thompson’s blatant bias.

Read the disgraceful speech in full here

Read Terry Sanderson’s attack on it at the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog - and join in the debate!

17 October 2008