Adrian Chiles: God on the Med

'My Mediterranean With Adrian Chiles' - doesn't give you many clues to the subject matter. Football stadiums on the med? One Bloke in a Boat? 

It's so much better than that:

“Jesus said, ‘The meek will inherit the earth.’ Well, they might do but they get no press along the way at all, they’re completely forgotten,” said Chiles. “And I’m not just talking about Christians, I’m talking about [all religions].”

The football presenter hosts a new religious series beginning tomorrow night on BBC2, for which the working title, Holy Med, has been replaced by the less religious-sounding My Mediterranean with Adrian Chiles. “The fourth word in it is ‘God’. It’s as though they think everyone will have lost their remote control,” the presenter said of a series which opens with him saying “I believe in God”, and in which he spends time with Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Judging by his interview, the BBC took any reference to religion out of the title. Here's a summary of what it's all about: a personal tour of the Med, meeting Christians, Muslims and Jews, and trying to deal with his own questions about God and faith along the way.

There were three striking things about last nights episode. I'll start with the most disconcerting. Chiles made his confession to a Catholic cardinal, speaking about his divorce in particular. Rather than offering grace, the cardinal suggested an annulment. I'm not surprised Chiles wasn't satisfied, it's an outrageous suggestion: the marriage happened, the divorce happened, but the idea that the solution is a paper technicality rather than the amazing grace of God is an insult to the gospel.

The second was the people Chiles sought out. The series was a deliberate antidote to religious fanaticism, profiling people from all 3 religions whose main goal is to do good and bless others. "I want to show that religion actually does more good than harm. I won’t be seeking out the religious zealots – they get quite enough airtime if you ask me. I just want to find the majority; the nice, normal, gentle people who happen to be religious.” It was a welcome counter-narrative to the extremists and atheists usually paraded by the media, and by radicalising groups: that we have more in common than we think, and less to be afraid of than we're told.

Which fed into the third striking thing, which was Chiles repeated argument that Jews, Muslims and Christians all worship the same God. There was a stress on the unknowability of God, and therefore the provisionality of our approach to him. Chiles said he has “more in common with a liberal Jew and a liberal Muslim than I have with even a conservative Roman Catholic”. He added: “Does it calm you down or fire you up? If it’s the latter, I think you are missing the point but who am I to judge? It’s [religious] fervour that frightens me more than anything else." Fervour was equated with wanting to convert people. 

There's more than one way to show religious fervour: you have to be highly committed to make religious vows, or to run a Catholic school with 80% of Muslim children that tries to build bridges. The peacemakers need to be just as zealous as everyone else. 

Adrian Chiles was a very engaging presenter, and last nights episode was refreshing, informative, well-paced and personal. It's a reminder that practice can often make more sense to people than theology (though the section where he tries to work out the prayer practices in a synagogue is hilarious). But the internal logic of each faith involves uniqueness: a chosen people, 'the prophet', the son of God. That didn't seem to fit with the narrative. I can understand that: Chiles (oddly for a football fan) is discomfited by passionate adherence, and wants to know that we can live together happily. But to be acceptable, we have to give up being missionary. What would Jesus do?  

Well done to Adrian Chiles for sticking his head above the parapet, more of this sort of thing please.

RE:THINK BBC religion and ethics conference: can God be slotted?

The BBC are hosting a religion and ethics conference later this week, featuring Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Sacks, and a range of seminars and talks on ethical and religious topics. Looks fascinating, and there's a good interview with the new(ish) head of Religon and Ethics here. Aquil Ahmed will be debating the 'God slot' on Wednesday, and had this to say in the interview:

He will make it clear that he wants the corporation’s religious programmes to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, including atheists.

While he will retain traditional religious programmes such as Songs of Praise, he will increasingly commission shows that deal with faith in broader contexts, such as Dead Good Job, an observational series starting this week about the work of undertakers across different religious communities and people no faith.

He said: “When we say 'rethinking the God slot’, it is to say there’s probably a lot more religion on television than people realise, it’s just not classed in the old-fashioned sense as, 'it is at this time, therefore it’s a God slot kind of programme’.

“The old fashioned concept of, 'it’s Sunday, it’s this time of day, every channel has got some kind of programme about Christianity’...those days are gone.

“People are fascinated by religion and you don’t have to know that you’re watching a specific programme about religion.”

The whole idea of a God slot is nonsense anyway, God doesn't fit into a slot, everything else slots into God. To confine spiritual content to Songs of Praise and Thought for the Day has an implicit dualism. I guess Christians have wanted to protect these 'slots' because they feared that, without them, God would disappear completely from the airwaves.

Far from it: when things have calmed down a bit there's probably a dissertation to be written on religious symbolism and content in the Olympic ceremonies, from the hymns in the Olympic opening event, to the overt pagan symbolism in the closing ceremony yesterday. The BBC conference itself suggest that, the less religious we get as a nation, the more we want to think about religion. It's a time of flux, it's not just the goalposts that are moving but all the pitch markings too. So we can expect plenty more debate about where the lines should eventually fall.

BBC campaign for assisted suicide continues

Update: looks like the coverage on the radio was even worse.

Click onto the main BBC page at the time of writing and ' 'Strong case' for assisted dying' is the main headline alongside the continuing story of the Stephen Lawrence investigation. Thinking that maybe this was some key report by the BMA, I clicked through to the story. It's no such thing.

The story itself is about a report by a 'group of experts'. It turns out the 'group of experts' are a group of supporters of euthanasia, gathered together by Charlie Falconer (who's twice tried to get assisted dying put into law via the Lords) and funded by Terry Pratchett, a noted public supporter of assisted dying.

This is the equivalent of the church of England appointing a group of bishops to investigate whether praying is a good thing, and reporting back that, well I never, actually it is.

There's a fairly direct statement already up on the Church of England website in response to the report, it begins:
The 'Commission on Assisted Dying' is a self-appointed group that excluded from its membership anyone with a known objection to assisted suicide. In contrast, the majority of commissioners, appointed personally by Lord Falconer, were already in favour of changing the law to legitimise assisted suicide. Lord Falconer has, himself, been a leading proponent for legitimising assisted suicide, for some years.


Rarely is the CofE press machine so quickly out of the blocks. The main issue is whether a system of safeguards can be created which enables assisted suicide for those who want it, whilst protecting those who might be vulnerable. Buried away in the BBC report is a statement from the BMA, which doesn't support assisted suicide. One might have thought their opinions would be nearer the top of the page.

Which brings me back to the BBC. They've been very careful not to step over the line on this one, but here we have a public service broadcaster, financed by the license payer. Whenever there has been an attempt in Parliament to get pro-euthanasia legislation passed, the BBC has put up a cluster of sympathetic programmes. The most recent, and most blatant, was the Terry Pratchett letter, chaired by the Dimbleby dynasty, to an audience of the great and the good. No questions, no debate, no alternative view put forward. And with the arguments being presented very personally, that makes it very hard to dispute them without looking heartless and mean. But there's no question that the BBC has an agenda here, and it's systematic enough to reach the headline writers for their web page.

Other links
Piece from the Independent earlier this week, in favour of the proposals, and focusing on Lord Blair, former police chief and commission member. A Carers Journey picks out some of the key bits.
Care not Killing on the makeup of the commission, and response to the report.
Same Difference blogging on disability.
Glyn Davies, MP for Montgomeryshire
Digital Nun on what this, and the Lawrence trial, say about our attitudes to life and death.
Cranmer, writing yesterday.
Vic the Vicar - very good and thoughtful piece.
Nick Baines

BBC Coverage of Euthanasia: Spot the Agenda?

Update: The Pratchett lecture was very good, delivered (completely from memory, from what I could see) by Tony Robinson on Terry Pratchett's behalf. As part of the debate, it was worth seeing, very thought provoking, and very honest. Panorama was pretty good, it brought in a range of opinions, though the core story was of a mum who helped her daughter to end her own life. Within that context, it's hard not to present those choices sympathetically.

In the middle of the Dimbleby lecture (with both brothers on the front row), between mentions of Martin Amis and Michael Parkinson, I was struck by the presence of the Baby Boomer generation at the forefront of the pro-euthanasia campaign. The line 'my life, my death, my choice' had echoes of the Boomer mantra 'we want to be free, to do what we wanna do' (from Easy Rider I think). In the 60s and 70s they tested the sexual boundaries, in the 80's and 90's the boundaries of consumption and greed, and now that the boomers have finished their world with SAGA, the idea that a life lived totally on my own terms might not end on my own terms jars with everything the Boomers have done and campaigned for. I'd be interested to see the breakdown of the Panorama surveys by age cohort.

Today:
Panorama documentary 'I helped my daughter to die' (judging by the title, it will be sympathetic to the assisted dying argument).
Terry Pratchett lecture (same link) arguing for the right to assisted suicide.

December 08-Jan 09
'A Short Stay in Switzerland' dramatisation with Julie Walters of the death of retired doctor Ann Turner, who travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end her life.
Panorama 'I'll Die When I Choose'.
both sympathetic, and aired in the run-up to a Parliamentary debate on the issue.

News coverage of the Joffe bill in 2006, with commentary by Care Not Killing, a coalition of groups opposed to euthanasia. The summing up by reporter Fergus Walsh is quite obviously one-sided.

I'm struggling to think of a programme devoted to the issue which presented both sides equally, let alone allowed a supporter of palliative care to set the agenda and tone for the piece. If I'm wrong, then please let me know some examples, and I'll happily blog them.

In the meantime, I don't want my license payers money used so that the BBC can be a mouthpiece for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. Yes this is a complex issue, there are arguments on both sides, and its emotionally charged, but to me it doesn't look like the BBC are facilitating a debate, more that they are running a campaign. Is that fair?

Defender of the Faith?

Rather strange, and very disconcerting, that Nick Griffin was the only panellist promoting 'Christian values' on Question Time tonight. When I say 'Christian Values', I'm just quoting him, it's not what most of the rest of us mean by 'Christian Values', as the Evangelical Alliance have pointed out very strongly.

But I was trying to remember the last time a Question Time panellist specifically mentioned the Christian faith as a source of inspiration. If this is politicians 'doing God', then maybe Alastair Campbell was right.

Your humble blogger sets the 5live agenda.

This morning Simon Mayo used Twitter to ask for questions for the new BBC head of sport, Barbara Slater. I sent in the following:

question for Barbara Slater "will the BBC try to get the Ashes coverage back in time for the next series, and if not why not?"

It was the first up on the programme, and got a 2 1/2 minute answer: the section starts about 1:39:45 in on this link. Mayo himself followed it up with several supplementaries. The answer is going in the right direction, but I wasn't happy with the fact she wouldn't commit herself to securing the Ashes for free TV. Anyway, it set the agenda for the first 6 minutes or so of the interview, so three cheers for Twitter.

She agreed with the point I've made elsewhere that the viewing figures for the ashes were dismal, compared to when it was free to air. But kept couching it in terms of choices between competing sports. I guess that's fair enough, but it's also a choice between sports and other stuff.

(...and if it wasn't for Iplayer, I wouldn't know any of this, having missed the programme! )

It sets me wondering about using Twitter though: it'd be an interesting way to organise our preaching. More people listen to phone-ins and live interviews than straight lectures, so if our teaching/reflection was more this style, would more people engage with (and contribute to) it?

Meanwhile Lets have the next Ashes on free TV!

Message to the Beeb: We'd Rather Have Freddie than Wossy

The new BBC head of sport was being interviewed by Simon Mayo today, but I missed the interview. Gutted, as I'd sent in a question about when the BBC was going to restore cricket to free TV on behalf of the nation. The nearest I can find to a report on her views is this, from Twitter...

JTLovell1979: @AlisonMitchell Don't think she's a cricket fan by the sound of it. Not v enthusiastic about the Ashes being on BBC

There is a Facebook group calling for the next Ashes (2013 - should give the Beeb long enough to save some cash from Jonathan Ross's salary) to be free on live TV. Please join it.

'You Can't Say **** On the Radio'*: Manuel, Manners and the Media.

Far be it from me to moralise about the BBC’s week of turmoil.

Or then again....

The Beeb are probably hoping the suspension of Jonathan Ross and resignation of Russell Brand will draw a line under this whole business. I think the BBC’s actions are right, but I hope it’s the start of something, not the end of it.

Who’s Answering?
There have been nudging 35,000 complaints about those phone calls. Just to put this into context, the broadcast of ‘Jerry Springer, the Opera’ on BBC2 attracted 63,000 complaints, but was okayed by the Governors Programmes Complaints Committee. No Trustees meetings, no resignations. And the now notorious Russell Brand show apparently went on to make some fairly off-colour remarks about Jesus (so I’m told by someone who heard the show - all the podcasts have been removed so there’s no way of checking), but without protest from anyone.

Folk of my age grew up with the Young Ones, at the time a groundbreaking comedy sitcom, which was right at the edge of 1980’s boundaries of taste and decency. Scanning the scripts now, what’s notable is the relative absence of swearing and crude sexual references - though it didn’t seem like it at the time. Set alongside the main post-watershed comedy fare now (Little Britain, Armstrong and Miller, Harry & Paul, Mitchell & Webb), it looks very tame indeed.

‘He’s Cleared the Boundary By a Mile!’
There’s no question that the boundaries have shifted. The public has become more tolerant of swearing, sex and violence, in fact some programmes seem to play up to this (e.g a gratuitious beheading in the recent Bonekickers. This attracted 100+ complaints, but was defended by the BBC. Again, it was a Christian group portrayed in a bad light. Do you see a trend emerging?)
How far is too far? Brandon Ross’s sin seems to have been to get personal - their material has no shortage of gross/sexual/tastless content, but what made it unpalatable was that there was an individual target, without the right of reply, who seems to have been thoughtlessly picked on and made fun of.

This is what comedy does all the time, from Les Dawsons mother-in-law to Steve Coogans desperate DJ’s and former roadies - but they pick on a stereotype, a human characteristic, an abstraction, rather than a real person. Satire like HIGNFY picks on people who are already in the public eye, but often to expose hypocrisy, mixed motives and political spin. That’s very different to what happened on 18th October.

Have I Got **** For You
But even the language markers on Have I Got News for You have shifted. Yesterdays show was unusual in it’s use of the bleeper (does anyone know why f*** is offensive when Tom Baker says it but not when it’s Alexander Armstrong?) - normally there is no censorship of bad language, and it wasn’t always like that. There has been a relentless erosion of the forbidden territory here, and in some ways the answerphone messages are the logical extension of this. If broadcasters can now use whatever words they like, the only way to shock or push the boundaries is in how you use them, or who you use them to.

Instead, the shock has been that there actually was a boundary. From Jools Holland (using the f-word live on Channel 4 in the Tube, a massive scandal in its day) to Chris Evans, Graham Norton, and Russell Brand the BBC has stuffed its schedules with known boundary-pushers. The only suprise is that they’ve not invited Chris Morris to present the news. (For what it’s worth, I like Hollands show, and last year he performed a new Mass setting in a couple of Cathedrals, so he’s virtually an Establishment figure now.)

There are some boundaries of taste which have tightened considerably. Racist, and to a lesser extent sexist humour are now mostly taboo (though Life on Mars got away with both by setting the jokes in 1973). But these are the exception rather than the rule.

Can You Laugh at Jesus?
However religion hasn’t gone the same way. For me as a Christian, to hear Jesus ridiculed and made a figure of fun is deeply offensive. To some degree I’m so used to it that it’s less offensive than it should be. I’m not talking about things like Life of Brian, which (the crucifixion scene apart, which I find quite uncomfortable) was a brilliant religious satire. But the Jerry Springer broadcast demonstrated that there was, effectively, nothing that would be deemed too offensive to show when it came to Christianity, and no level of protest which would cause broadcasters to think again.

There is a difference between how Christianity is treated and how other faiths are dealt with. In part it’s ignorance - there is still some general public awareness of the Christian story and Christian stereotypes, which comedians can make use of. Just imagine this Eddie Izzard routine applied to, say Hinduism. It’s the Christian reference points which make it work. We just don’t know enough about other religions to make them the stuff of comedy.

It’s also partly fear, especially when it comes to Islam, because whilst we’ve established what people will put up with (or at least, what everyone except thousands of dismayed Christians will put up with) when Christianity is ridiculed, those lines are nothing like as clear with Mohammed and the Koran. And we’re so used to Christians protesting politely that the vehemence of Islamic outrage is a shock.

A third reason is the fact that the relationship between Western satire and secularism and Muslim culture is much less developed than it’s relationship with Christianity. For the latter, you can go back to Chaucer, with Islam we just have Omid Djalili. Except that he’s Bahai.

The Brand Bounce?
Last year was the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery, achieved against mountainous opposition by William Wilberforce and other campaigners. Wilberforce’s other main achievement was the ‘reformation of manners’:

Wilberforce’s second life goal was “the reformation of manners.” What he envisioned was a restoration to Britain of the Christian virtues of charity and civility in a culture that had markedly decayed in both

and he succeeded in transforming a society which tolerated slavery, child prostitution, and poverty alongside the dissolute lives of the rich. It is possible for boundaries of taste and decency to shift upwards, as well as downwards. We can be just a bit more restrained than we are now, without invoking the Victorian Values bogeyman (that convenient killer of debate). I’d love to see it in my lifetime. I’d love to see it start this week.

* this song, which seems very relevant now!
This is a cross-post from the Touching Base column hosted by the Wardman Wire

PS if you've not had enough of all this by now, then try this article by Howard Jacobsen in the Independent.

Faith on the BBC: Bonekickers & Doctor Who

Caught up with Bonekickers, the latest BBC drama from the creators of Life on Mars, via Iplayer last night. Despite getting panned from some quarters, I thought it was quite fun, and didn't feel got at as an evangelical Christian, despite the Times reviewers concerns. ("I am not a Christian, but if I were, the demonisation of evangelicals, not to mention the casual “miracle” pulled off by a splinter left by the rood in a nurse's finger, would make me cross")

The episode focused on an archaeological dig which had uncovered some dead Templar Knights and (possibly) a fragment of the Cross. A right-wing preacher used it to back his message of kicking non-Christians out of the country, one of his followers decapitated a peace-loving Muslim, and it all ended in a dramatic showdown in an underground cavern full of Roman crosses - the Templars not being able to decide which was the 'true cross', so they kept them all.

Mostly cobblers, though it's interesting that the standard Christian character has evolved. Back in the 70's it was the ineffectual and naive vicar (Dick Emery, Derek Nimmo), the Vicar of Dibley has killed off the 'trendy vicar' stereotype by showing that modern is fine, and now the extremist bible-thumper is the caricature of choice. There was an alternative though - there were 2 other characters with faith, one a nurse, reading the Bible at the bedside of dying patients, and the other the fresh-faced newcomer to the Bonekickers team, Viv. At one point Viv challenges Gillian, the bossy team leader, on her claim that all religions do is cause wars. 'God is in the small things and the quiet places', a line which recurs later and gets some sort of vindication.

I'm intrigued that following the Sunday School backdrop to Alex's character in Ashes to Ashes (as well as a Christian nutter episode, if I recall), we have another series from the same writers where one of the main characters has some kind of faith. It would have been easy to trash Christianity entirely, but the show didn't. And in Hugh Bonnnevilles brilliant character, there's a chance to roll out the one-liners, I love the one on the trailer for episode 2.

Compare and contrast Doctor Who, a show which by rights should be getting as much debate as the Matrix did over spiritual themes and worldview. There are plenty of similarities, from carbon-copy special effects (frozen bullets, light bursting out of the main character at the moment of his 'death'), to the blend of religious worldviews at the core of the plot. At one level Doctor Who is thoroughly humanist - the Doctor believes in the human race, and he keeps on saving it (and other species) and tries to help people get along. At another level it is thoroughly spiritual, as I've posted before.

The question the series finale left me with is: does the pagan or Christian worldview call the shots here? There is recurrent Christian symbolism - resurrection, exodus, eternal life, and so on. But there's a strong pagan current too: the Pompeii episode has the Doctor and Donna being enshrined as the houshold gods, and the finale played both with the notion of prophecy and of fate. Something has brought Donna to the point where she is instrumental in saving the universe, and though the Doctor doesn't believe in fate, he can't avoid the fact that the universe seems to be placing Donna at the centre of events. At the same time the talking squid Dalek Caan has a 'prophecy' (he's seen into the future through a rift in time) of the end of all things, and that 'one will die'. Caan is clearly cracked, but then so was Ezekiel.

Even more interesting, it played with the idea of two natures in one person. Twice. Doctor II had the Doctors mind, but was mortal. Donna was human already, got the Doctors mind into her own, but couldn't cope with it and had to be returned to her life before she met him. If you're a Christology lecturer, and want to explore the issues around the divine and human natures in Jesus, and how two natures in one person works, then you could have great fun starting the lectures with this........

Okay, it's all sci-fi hokum, and we shouldn't take it too seriously, but you never got this sort of stuff in Star Trek. The fact that the 'story arcs' (to use the jargon) in these series are prepared to play with spiritual themes is quite significant:

1. If you want to know what the visual media think of religion, don't bother with Songs of Praise, watch the dramas.

2. Spirituality and religion is no longer the property of the church or the experts. That means that everyone is happy to have a go, whether they have the slightest clue what they're on about or not. It's much more of a free-for-all, but it's much more alive than the days when all spiritual conversation was the property of the church, or new age weirdos. Spirituality is mainstream.

3. It is pick and mix: these things are brought in to drive a story, bring emotional impact, and to make the drama work. So they don't have the same integrity they do when they are part of the Christian (or another) narrative.

And it also means that there are 10m people in the UK who saw that last episode, where there's a conversation starter: "Donna or Doctor? do you believe in fate or just stuff just happen?"