The great-nephew of the BBC’s founder was joined by a host of alumni who have spent their careers working in religious broadcasting, as they debated the corporation’s take on religion on its 100th anniversary.
Lord Reith, the BBC’s first director-general, had felt a “divine calling” and “higher purpose” in taking on the role, his great nephew Andrew Harrison told an online media briefing from the Religion Media Centre.
“The Christian faith was a massive aspect of his life, and therefore of the BBC,” he said.
Echoing that sentiment was Paul Kerensa, host of the British Broadcasting Century podcast. He said Reith, a Scottish Presbyterian and son of a minister, was inspired by a sermon he heard upon arriving in London, based on a reading from Ezekiel 22:30, when God was looking for a defender of the people, but none was found. Though he did not have the broadcasting background, he “seized this idea bubbling away”, according to Mr Kerensa, to preserve the nation’s moral compass.
Whatever success he may have achieved, Lord Reith resigned in 1938 and, according to the BBC’s website, he publicly criticised what he felt were falling standards until his death in 1971.
While the religious output of the BBC may be a world away from its inception a century ago, the overall consensus of the briefing was that the corporation continued to evolve to meet the challenge in an ever-changing religious landscape.
Mike Wooldridge, a former BBC religion correspondent, said his time working as a foreign correspondent in Africa prepared him well for the role, as “religion had been so much a part of people’s lives” there.
“I can’t really think of any other subject which gives you such a spectacular range of events to cover,” he said, citing a trip accompany Archbishop George Carey to Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide.
That scope has only grown in recent years, as Britain becomes ever more diverse and a high-speed internet continues to connect us.
Aleem Maqbool, appointed the BBC’s religion editor in April, said religion had been central to the “global news agenda” since he took up the role six months ago. He cited the examples of the attack on author Salman Rushdie, and the religious dimensions of the conflict in Ukraine.
“There hasn’t been much need for lobbying or pushing any stories on the religious agenda because it’s sort of dictated by events around the world,” he said, while much of what goes on elsewhere in the world has a direct impact on the UK. “I’m very lucky that the beat gives such breadth of opportunities to tell stories both domestic and global,” he added.
His colleague Harry Farley, a senior journalist specialising in religion at BBC News, echoed that sentiment. “There’s a real appetite for new interesting religious angles from the newsroom,” he said.
Fifty years ago, BBC Radio 4 launched the Sunday programme, a digest of news about religion, edited by David Winter. One of its first reporters was Trevor Barnes, who explained that it moved from being “quite churchy” when it started, to covering stories that unfolded in the 1970s and 1980s such as the Iranian Revolution and political controversies when the Church of England challenged the Thatcher government.
In parallel, the BBC World Service had its own religion department producing worship, news and feature programmes for a global audience.
Over the past 50 years of BBC local radio, covering religion has always been about reporting and reflecting faith communities, according to Leo Devine, formerly a BBC senior editor in several regions. Amazing stories of hope and inspiration have been uncovered.
Alex Strangwayes-Booth, who serves all BBC local radio religion producers, said stations had moved from volunteer “god squads” to engaging staff producers, often finding local stories that feed into the network agenda, such as shortages of burial plots or a shortfall in healthcare chaplains.
Since the pandemic, she said, local radio has produced worship programmes that are syndicated across all the stations, drawing communities together.
The panel also discussed the corporation’s broader religious output, including the Daily Service, Songs of Praise and Thought for the Day. Regarding the latter, they debated the discussion about whether the 7.50am slot was still relevant in the hard-hitting BBC Radio 4 news programme, Today.
Christine Morgan, a former BBC head of religion and ethics, insisted it remained relevant, particularly since contributors now hailed from a broad range of backgrounds, having initially started out as focusing on “white male Christian clerics”.
“Thought for the Day has … a range of voices who have been able to talk about faith in a way that has helped people cope with the news and the cut and thrust of all the controversy and the conflict,” she said. The content has “never shied from the harm done by religion”, she said, but discussing these issues from a faith perspective “helps people to deal with the news”.
On whether it continued to be relevant today, she said: “There’s still an audience out there who want to have that different lens on the news. It’s easy to talk up that that there’s no place for it anywhere — I don’t think that’s actually true.”
Last year the BBC celebrated the 60th anniversary of its religious flagship, Songs of Praise. Representing one of Britain’s longest-running programmes was its editor, Matthew Napier, who said it was a “privilege” to work on — although its scheduling was often overtaken by big sporting events.
“We maintain the format that we always have done. We largely sandwich stories between hymns,” he said.
Discussing how broadcast worship had developed over the years, Stephen Oliver, a retired bishop and former BBC senior producer, said he felt the Daily Service had a “lack of soul” when he first took over. He then went on to pioneer broadcasting from religious places such as Iona, Lindisfarne and the Holy Land.
Canon Angela Tilby, who worked as a BBC religion producer for many years and is now a familiar voice on Thought for the Day, praised the BBC as a “great force for ecumenism”, saying the Daily Service adapted its ministry and service on radio in a similar way to the take up of online services during the pandemic.
“It has adapted, I think rather brilliantly, to a very different style of worship of music, of presentation, radio presentation, much less formal and much more chatty,” she said.
Now, apart from Songs of Praise, religion on BBC television is found in specially commissioned programmes rather than in-house. Anna McNamee, executive director of the Sandford St Martin Trust, said funding was the most critical issue affecting BBC programming, as producers and content-makers sought to attract audiences with less money.
Alongside worship and factual genres, general programmes deal with religious themes, such as the drama series “Broken” or “Time”, she said.
Reflecting on the story of religion at the BBC over the past 100 years, Christine Morgan said its impact had been vital on the religious life of the nation “We’ve got to find ways of talking to people about religion, in ways that they can identify with,” she said. “That is our job. We are giving people a different way of looking at the world, what’s going on in the news, or the concerns of the day, and we’re also filling something of a cultural void.”
Commenting on the decline of religious belief in Britain today, she said: “It’s not a numbers game. Religion today is culture, and community, which is much needed. And it’s identity, it’s the common good, it’s shared by us as all sorts of things.”
The decline in religious literacy remained a challenge for the BBC, but one that it continues to rise to, as it has “always had an audience with all shades of belief and non-belief”.
She added: “Good religious broadcasting can absolutely speak into that. It needs people who are passionate about it and who know about it, not because they’re trying to sell something, but because actually there is a need — and it is up to us to meet it.”
Watch the entire briefing on our YouTube channel:
