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What's Getting The BBC's Goat?
The BBC has come under fire for showing a pattern of anti-Christian bias. A season based on the experiences of Britain's white working classes led with a drama which suggested that conversion to Islam was the only salvation on offer for the downtrodden poor. This is to be followed by a new drama based on Christ's Passion, in which Judas and Pontius Pilate "appear to be exonerated."
This being the BBC one can only assume a level of studied purpose in this new tack. It is however a strange and dangerous road to take. The boffins who make these decisions at the BBC are not stupid, they know who they're likely to offend. The question is why?
Perceived bias is as bad for a media empire as being found out ‘making stories up’. Guilty news organisations end up narrowing their client base and eventually find they are only talking to themselves. In this way, the BBC is a mirror image of ‘Browns New Labour’, and ‘Cameron’s green-air heads’ under Europe.
But why bash Christians? Do they not realise that in the age of the Net, crude cultural stereotyping and the associated blunt messages are as dead as the old ‘DAZ’ adverts from the 60s? Its totally counter-productive. You are found out in seconds.
Why Christians?
I can only think of two reasons:
The first, as a hangover from the now discredited cult of multiculturalism, exposed as a flawed concept even by its architects. The premise that “advocates a society that extends equitable status to distinct cultural and religious groups, no one culture predominating” is great as a theory but a disaster in practice as the phenomena of “home grown” terrorists demonstrates quite clearly.
A Nation needs an identity. This is presumably why Gordon Brown is now scrambling to create some kind of pastiche national identity having spent ten years trying to bury it. His henchmen even forward the idea of a shiny new written constitution to go with it.
Trying to do it without Christians is going to be hard. 72 % of Britons consider themselves ‘Christian’ according to the last census and Christianity has very deep roots here, going back 1,500 years.
Blatantly setting out to make this “community” feel cut off or discredited is only going to antagonise them. What’s the difference between ‘people reacting to being bombed or occupied’, the BBC’s normal line abroad and people resenting being ‘bombed with words’, clearly designed to offend, at home?
The second possible reason is a power thing.
We know that rationalist power-driven governments never liked Christians, even though Christians hail from all factions of the political spectrum.
It's about freedom. The thing is, Christianity is all about liberation and this tends to drive the politics in a ‘Christian - even if secular - country’. Not to say that it has a monopoly in this quarter, but this is the tendency.
Christ said “the truth shall set you free”.
Not the kind of message you need if you want to put everyone under the cosh.
And that of course is what just about every mad dictator and totalitarian state has done for the last century. We have quite a few choice cases in Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol-Pot, to name only the worst offenders. In previous centuries of course it was always just as bad, right back to the Romans - and that brings me back to the point. Rome was eventually converted to Christianity.
Christianity has shaken many an empire.
There is evidence of a serious revival in Christian faith in the UK as in Europe, while there is growth all over the world particularly in Africa and China. You don’t hear much about it because generally Christians don’t tend to show off. Also the media think it’s un-trendy.
There is also an overriding principle for ‘post Christian’ progressives and that is to underplay and to undermine by listing various supposed symbols of decline, such as the old cliché of empty pews. Most of the growth goes on clearly beyond the reach of the archaic statistics they use.
Christianity is not about politics or power, it is about freedom of another dimension and that is what gets the goat of those who are driven by power: It's hard to get enlightened people to buy into any old tripe just because it gives someone more power.
Put it this way. You can’t bash Christianity out of Britain or anywhere else, ask that Polish plumber next time he comes around to fix a pipe. 70 years of persecution could not overcome its deep roots. Poland's Christian revival tipped the first domino that brought down the Soviet Union.
The BBC needs to rethink its attitude towards Christians that make up 72% of its client base in the UK. They are not going to disappear because of a few crude insults, nor by pretending Christian faith is a thing of the past are they going to wish them all away. Anyway they should take a good look at those clauses within their charter and ask themselves where those high-minded principles came from, it could just set them on a new path.
