My shocking idea for Songs Of Praise? Try some Christianity!
IDOUBT anyone was surprised when the BBC’s Songs Of Praise featured a same-sex wedding last week. Like lesbian kisses, same-sex weddings are now more or less compulsory in all radio and TV programmes, and I fully expect to encounter one, or both together, in the early morning Shipping Forecast any day now.
After failing to shock anyone, and perhaps disappointed at the lack of fuss, staff at Songs Of Praise said,
in words that sound a bit petulant to me, that they were ‘not afraid of controversy’. Aren’t they, though? I’ll come to that in a moment.
These events are all about turning things upside down. They are always aimed at anything which has until now been traditional or conservative. This is why such huge efforts were made to get women to sign up as firefighters or to go to sea in warships, but I have never heard of a similar scheme to persuade women to work on other mainly male tasks, such as crewing council dustcarts, or keeping the sewers running.
So poor old Songs Of Praise, once a tiny refuge for the Christian elderly amid all the swearing and violence of modern TV, was long ago measured up by the Commissars for a new role. It’s years since it adopted a ‘magazine format’ (fewer hymns, less religion). In the end, it will no doubt be replaced by another panel show, in which Christianity will be just one of many religions, occasionally mentioned as an odd thing that other people do and generally mixed up with child abuse.
But if it’s really ‘not afraid of controversy’, may I suggest that it commissions some special editions with the following themes:
A doctor – perhaps the American Dr Anthony Levatino, who used to perform abortions but now doesn’t (and has eloquently explained his decision before a Committee of the US Congress) – describes the procedure and opens a discussion on whether it can be justified.
The programme visits an area of one of Britain’s poorer big cities, which has been affected by largescale migration, and asks the locals how it has changed their lives.
It gives a platform to a supporter of traditional lifelong marriage (as prescribed by the Christian church) to explain why such marriages benefit children and society as a whole.
Not afraid of controversy, eh? I think we may have to wait a long time before any of these ever come to our screens. I am used to the dreary Left-wing consensus, and long ago stopped being surprised by it.
But I am still annoyed by its continuing pretence that it is brave, original and radical, when in fact it is now the safe, boring conventional wisdom.