From the editor’s desk

Faith and the BBC

In 1984 the then-Lutheran (later Catholic) American polemicist Richard Neuhaus published his book The Naked Public Square, a counter-attack on those who were trying to use the American First Amendment about the separation of Church and State to make religion disappear from public visibility. The Naked Public Square quickly became something of a cult in America. But from a British perspective at the time it seemed far-fetched. The aggressive secularism it was denouncing has now raised its head in Britain, however, and has turned its focus recently on one symbolic issue, the daily broadcasting by BBC Radio of the slot “Thought for the Day”.

The slot is described by the BBC as a “reflection from a religious perspective” on topical issues. It usually runs to less than 500 words, and is given by a range of contributors selected from each of the major faith communities in Britain. The editor of The Tablet, Catherine Pepinster, and its editorial consultant, Clifford Longley, are among them. The secularist lobby’s latest campaign against “Thought for the Day” has just been rebuffed in a long and measured judgment by the BBC Trust, the corporation’s supervising body. The trust found that none of the BBC’s requirements for impartiality and fairness under its Public Service Remit had been breached by the existence of this programme in its present form. The terms of reference of “Thought for the Day” implicitly exclude participation by atheists, humanists and secularists, and it is this policy that the campaign specifically sought to reverse. But it is clear, both from the nature of the complaints to the trust and from the surrounding publicity campaign, that what was really being objected to was the valuable exposure religion receives from this programme, particularly as it is broadcast at a prime time of the morning in the middle of the BBC’s flagship current-affairs magazine, Today. Secularist commentators wanted to go on air to challenge, refute and even ridicule the truth-claims of religion. One complainant, for instance, found religion “deeply offensive”; another said the programme gave religion “undeserved credibility”; and a third asked the BBC to stop “the promotion of magic”. They made the mistake of overstating what could have been a good case, and of wanting to see “Thought for the Day” become yet another arena for a wearisome clash between secularism and faith. There is no obvious reason why a secular moral philosopher should not, for instance, give BBC listeners a brief Aristotelian account of virtue, and apply it, say, to the contemporary banking crisis. But that would not help drive religion from the public square, so that is not what the secularists were asking for.

“Thought for the Day” will continue to be reviewed, BBC executives have said, but for the moment it has been saved. However, the BBC Trust has underlined the importance of its contributions staying strictly within BBC editorial guidelines on “due impartiality”, warning, for instance, against contributors stepping out of the pulpit on to the soapbox. Part of the pressure to blur the distinction arises from the nature of broadcasting itself, especially the demand to avoid blandness and to say something interesting. If the long-term effect of the secularists’ campaign is to propel “Thought for the Day” towards the safety of irrelevance, they may yet have succeeded in driving at least one nail into its coffin.