Dr Rowan Williams warned Mark Thompson at a meeting at Lambeth Palace that the broadcaster must not ignore its Christian audience.
His intervention comes amid mounting concern among senior members of the Church of England that the BBC is downgrading its religious output and giving preferential treatment to minority faiths.
Wow. The guy actually stands up for his own religion to the secular world. I really am shocked.
yes — but unfortunately I question if his ‘own religion’ is the same as the faith of the Saints sometimes!
“The emergence of a Muslim as the front-runner to succeed Mr Wakelin, along with the recent appointment of a Sikh to produce Songs of Praise, has raised fears within the Church that the Christian voice is being sidelined.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation, funded by an annual tax on televison ownership (yes, seriously!), doesn’t even bother to hide its contempt of Britain’s Christians.
Farewell, once great Britain.
But then it is the same British television executives who would not ban Jerry Springer the Musical depsite over 3000 blasphemies and a scene, shown close up, in which the Virgin Mary peformed a sex act on her beloved son.
Did that incident not tell us precisely what we are dealing with in our day?
Azusa:
The licence fee is not exactly a tax on television ownership, but a licence paid to the BBC to enable you to receive broadcasts (of any type, including from independent companies or via satellite or cable).
We have a television, but my wife and I decided to stop paying our licence fee as a protest against the BBC some time ago. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross fiasco (anyone in the UK will know what I mean). But the Jerry Springer business which rugbyplayingpriest refers to was one of the earlier ones. Reading Robin Aitken’s ‘Can we trust the BBC?’ focussed the issues for us, too.
The BBC is trading on people’s memories of ‘Auntie BBC’ of a generation ago. The aggressively secualr organisation of today is very different. Our conclusion was to stop feeding the beast by ceasing to give it our money.
It just means our TV has to remain unplugged from the outside world. It has been for six months now – and, you know, we haven’t missed it. And we aren’t complicit in furthering the BBC’s secular agenda. That’s a good feeling, especially when stories like this come along.
Muslims claim that their faith is a “way of life” rather than a mere religion. That argument seems to work when they ask for special favors, since everyone knows that Christianity is only practiced for an hour or so on Sundays. Just try to worship as a Christian in Saudi Arabia!
William S: I know it’s technically a ‘license fee’ – but it doesn’t ‘enable’ you to receive broadcasts (the TV does that by itself). But I call it a tax on television USE (like the tax – or ‘duty’ – on cars on the road), as the money goes only to the BBC and not the other broadcasters in the UK. A TV tax in any case is utterly retrograde today. You are to be commneded in not feeding the beast. Maybe you’ll be able to watch via the internet.