Tag Archives: christian-voice

Sunday morning tv

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Only a person who forgot to do anything appropriately debauched on a Saturday night would be awake and watching tv at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning. Bah, that would be me then.

Lo and behold, a show that cost about 50p to make, focussing on the topics that are guaranteed to bring froth to the mouth of a Daily mail reader. Is Sunday Morning Live the future of public service religious broadcasting under financial heavy manners?

The format: A studio discussion of ethical/religious issues. Webcam contributions from the public. A bottom of the screen rolling feed of quotes from viewers’ emails. Meaningless text message yes/no polls. Etc.

The wisdom of crowds. On the cheap.

As it says on the show’s page, today’s issues were:

This Sunday we’re back on air and we’ll be asking:
Should prostitution be socially acceptable?
Are we soft on Islam?
Should we allow gay marriage in church?
You can debate live with Susanna, our studio guests, and other callers

“Are we soft on Islam” turned out to be a photo-opportunity for Stephen Green of “Christian Voice.” A chance to reel out a load of untruths about how Christians are persecuted in the UK – sacked for waeraing crosses) and Muslims get all manner of advantages. (I think he mentioned providing a few women-only swimming sessions at some public baths as the evidence for this.)

Yes, it’s that Stephen Green unwilling star of a Channel 4 Dispatches exposé that I can’t find on tinterwebs or there’d be a link here.

His organisation is wonderful at getting the media to misrepresent its extremist views as a mainstream Christian viewpoint, despite the fact that he represents a tiny minority of Christians. He was described as a “disgrace” by the moderator of the United Reform Church.

He complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the atheist bus ads. He failed to make this complaint stick but, by the grace of the all-powerful god Irony, the ASA banned his advert that claimed that the cervical cancer vaccine caused infertility.

He’s a chap with an appetite for the law but a distinct unwillingness to pay the costs involved in using it. He prosecuted the BBC for showing Gerry Springer the Opera, then demanded that the BBC pay his costs when he lost :-D.

And now, here he is popping up on the BBC – even getting an appearance fee, I fear – presenting his noxious views. Truly the man is an Irony bishop.

Viz comic gave him a well deserved award in 2006.

Easter persecution show

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“Are Christians Being Persecuted?” on BBC1 tonight posed that ludicrous question. The description on the BBC site started with a contentious intro:

For years now, some town halls have been renaming their Christmas Lights as Winter Lights festivals. More and more Christians are ending up in court, defending themselves against what they see as victimisation for not being allowed to wear a cross to work or to pray for a patient.

It’s doubtful if “Winter Lights Festivals” are anything except an urban myth. But, anything is possible. Rebranding things on a random basis has somehow become compulsory in Britain. (For instance, the Department for Trade and Industry is on its third renaming in as many years. No one suggests that this means that Business is being persecuted.)

Ah ha, the programme has actually found a council that called its Christmas decorations “Winter Lights” one year (not “some town halls” and not “for years” then.) The council has now again rebranded the light switching-on procedure, as “Christmas in Autumn” or something.

Wny is the name given to street lights even remotely newsworthy?

Because of the media that feels no shame in trying to stir up controversy about nothing, maybe.

Or because of the activities of a tiny fringe group of extremists who are being quite successful in rebranding “Christianity” – redefining their religion in terms of items of jewelry and acts of bigotry. (At the same time, bringing into the UK fundy beliefs – like Intelligent Design – that mainstream UK Christians still laugh at.)

This was a truly annoying programme. It gave yet more credibility to the extreme wing of Christians, accepting their self-definition, so confusing the boundaries between them and the mainstream churches.

Although no member of the mainstream churches seems to have got into any dispute over wearing crosses, etc., any act of overzealous-personnel-management-madness directed against these people now gets seen as representing an attack on Christianity as a whole.

If you could bear to sit through the whole dull 60 minutes, the programme finally concluded that UK Christians aren’t actually being persecuted …… well, at least not compared to Christians in the Sudan. That almost defines “damning with faint praise.”

No angel

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If you were in hospital, what’s the least appealing behaviour you’d expect from the nursing staff?

(OK, I should rephrase that. The “least appealing” thing after “threats to your continued existence” or “carrying out painful and frightening medical interventions.” )

Anyway the answer to the lead rhetorical question was “behaving like a doorstep evangelist.”

Which is what this nurse did. She got suspended from work for it, but was then reinstated.

I’ve linked to the Times story, out of the many links that I could have put here, because it has a photo of the nurse which would win an undisputed Gold in the Semiotic Olympics. (I defy you to look at it without sniggering. If ever a portrait expressed the sitter’s personality on so many levels, this is it.)

Last week Mrs Petrie, who was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, was summoned to a disciplinary hearing on the basis that she had failed to demonstrate a “personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity” by offering her prayers.

Let me refresh your memory. This nurse bothered people with unsolicited offers of prayer, at a time when they were physically at the mercy of her goodwill. How irritating, even distressing, would that be? Imagine being seriously ill and feeling that you had to politely humour a god-botherer – who was, incidentally, getting paid to attend to YOUR needs rather than her own need to proselytise,

Sir Patrick Cormack, the Tory MP for South Staffordshire and a committed Anglican, told Parliament that the case illustrated the “utter absurdities” of political correctness.

Well, “political correctness” had to have gone mad somewhere in this tale, or we might begin to suspect that the “anti-PC brigade” weren’t even trying. Although, I admit that “utter absurdities” makes a refreshing change from the cliched “gone mad.”

Anyway, the Christian Legal Centre, don’t you just love them? They are like a Superman figure to defending people who somehow skipped the Sermon on the Mount stuff and define their “Christian faith” in terms of jewelry, opposition to statues, homophobia and freedom to push their own beliefs onto other people.

Their biggest moment in the spotlight was their failed blasphemy case against Jerry Springer the Opera.

(Which reminds me that the usually-hilariously-funny Stewart Lee co-producer of the Jerry Springer the Opera show has a new series starting on BBC on 18 March.)

A Channel 4 documentary last year showed Christian Voice and their fundy -funded chums in their true horror. It also did the world a major service by showing the incident in which Steven “Birdshit” Green earned his nickname. I mean, if that wasn’t a message from above, I don’t know what is.

Proof Of God – Christian Voice

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Who would have thought Christian Voice would have cracked under the pressure of the No God bus campaigns in London? OK, most people I suppose. Still it is entertaining that they are riled by a simple poster to the extent they are demanding the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency to rule on the proof of God.

From the BBC:

An atheist campaign claiming “There’s probably no God” has been reported to the advertising regulator.
Posters with the slogan appear on 800 buses in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as on the London Underground.
But organisation Christian Voice has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority saying they break rules on substantiation and truthfulness.

Pardon me for a moment while I fall off the chair laughing.

They are saying that the claim there is probably no god is insubstantiated and / or not truthful. How on Thor’s hammer do they intend to convince the ASA of this one wonders…

But Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said: “There is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.
“But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”

More laughter rings out around WhyDontYou Towers. Evidence for God exists in “personal experience” – surely this alone is a self defeating argument because if I do not have that experience the advertisement is accurate as stated. I do not have that personal experience, therefore (should the ASA be reading this) the banner is 100% correct. Thank you Christian Voice.

I assume Christian Voice have lodged similar complaints over any advertising that mentions non-Christian religions, so any posters for Mosques, Temples (etc) will have to come down. I would never suggest people be petty enough to go through Christian advertising with a fine tooth comb – each day on the way to work I see a huge poster telling me that I will die for my sins, where is the proof of that I wonder?

In a wonderful bit of understatement (and acting a lot more adult than Christian Voice…), Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said:

“I am sure that Stephen Green really does think there is a great deal of evidence for a God (though presumably only the one that he believes in), but I pity the ASA if they are going to be expected to rule on the probability of God’s existence.”

Indeed, it will be interesting to see what their decision is…

Stewart Lee, the Video

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A reference on PhillyChief’s blog reminded me about Stewart Lee and Jerry Springer, the Opera.

Stewart Lee is a comedian who became an arch-hate figure for Christian Voice a couple of years ago, because he was one of the writers of Jerry Springer the Opera. This was a tv programme that Christian Voice considered so inherently blasphemous that they tried to sue the BBC for broadcasting it. They were crowing on a channel Four documentary last year that they’d bankrupted the producers of the show, although I’m not sure if this has any basis in fact.

There are some really funny anti-Christian-Voice-blasphemy-complaint spiels in other Stewart Lee videos but I’ll post links to them at another time. This link isn’t to one of those, but I had to post it because of the irresistible Richard Littlejohn bit at the end.

Whenever I hear the phrase “Political correctness gone mad” I should reach for this video.

Stewart lee on political correctness gone mad

Parental Advisory: contains some extravagant and well-justified cussing 🙂

Christian Voice says people don’t like being preached to

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A Christian Voice spokesman acknowledged to the BBC that

“People don’t like being preached at.”

To what do we owe this unaccustomed recognition of reality?

Unfortunately, he hasn’t had a sudden world-view revision. He’s talking about the British Humanist Association Dawkins-backed plan to put an anti-religion advertising campaign on the sides of London buses. Which the Christian Voice chap has oddly decided to define as “preaching.”

The complete slogan reads: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

I am a bit ambivalent about this. I like the idea of having such slogans on buses and I like the idea that Christian Voice must be a bit nervous that it will actually succeed in deconverting people. But I don’t like the idea of being told what to think, in poster format, by an invisible narrator.