Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

The Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, has accused broadcasters of an “ideological knee-jerk” reaction against religion.

Writing in the Radio Times this week, Bishop Baines praised the BBC’s Holy Week and Easter schedule, including the Preston Passion (News, 6 January), as “increasingly imaginative”. He continued: “However, go beyond the BBC (and the odd bit of Channel 4) and religion has been dropped as if it were a toxic contaminator of decent culture. This ideological knee-jerk sees religion as an embarrassing problem (for which there is obviously no audience) rather than part of a solution (one lens through which to tell stories and understand people, their lives, and motivations).”

The Bishop wrote that ITV “sees no need to consider religion — despite the fact that more people shape their lives around religious conviction and practice than attend sporting events”. He was not arguing that “religion should be privileged or protected”, or that “religious propaganda should fill space in the schedules of broadcasters. But it is to maintain that we can’t understand people, events, and the way the world is if we don’t take religion seriously.”

Bishop Baines asked why BBC News had no “religion editor. . . if an economics editor is needed to help explain and interpret economic decisions and events in order that the public should be responsible citizens in our democracy, why on earth isn’t there someone to explain, interpret, and communicate the phenomenon of religion as it influences people, colours political and economic decisions, questions values and shapes both individual and corporate behaviour?”

The full article by Ed Thornton can be found on the 'Church Times' website