The trailer for the Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 3 listed the three best ways I might spend my Sunday morning, and assured me that the show was the perfect accompaniment to all three of them. They were: having a lie in, taking a walk, and preparing Sunday dinner.
I e-mailed the BBC and informed them that actually I go to church on a Sunday morning – as, presumably, a reasonable number of Radio 3 listeners do – and that in my humble opinion that is actually the best way to spend it.
I asked whether their list was based on any statistics they have – or whether, as the conspiracy theorists have it, their trailer was another subtle move in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s alleged strategy to undermine and marginalise the role of religion in British society.
I haven’t received a reply.
I don’t have any statistics, only anecdotal evidence. It would be interesting to carry out a study. How about it? Choose your media provider, and keep a tally of how religion (particularly Christianity) is treated.
For example, in a play, is it the case that good religion is presented as cosy, inclusive and non-demanding, whereas those who adhere to Bible-based views (particularly on morality) are presented either as dangerous bigots or figures of fun? In a historical drama, is it the case that prominent religious aspects of historical life (such as Bible reading and saying grace before meals) are edited out? Is the Bible ever presented as authoritative, or even relevant? Is faithful heterosexual marriage downplayed, in favour of alternative forms of relationship? In any programme about the natural world, is an evolutionary scientist recruited to reassure us that it has nothing to do with a Creator?
Maybe I’m just being a paranoid tin-hat scaremonger. Or maybe we can see at work in our media some of that influence which the Apostle Paul told us to expect in the last time before Christ’s return:
Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power (1 Timothy 3:1-5).
Chris Parkin