The BBC is alienating the primary audience of its longstanding program “Songs of Praise” and making a mockery of the church by featuring a same-sex wedding ceremony, charge viewers who have flooded the British broadcaster with complaints.
DailyMail.com reported the network received more than 1,200 complaints after the most recent program along with hundreds of letters of congratulations.
“Songs of Praise” broadcasts Christian worship services, making them available to people who are unable to attend in person.
The “gay wedding” of Jamie Wallace, 27, and Ian McDowall, 39, was performed at Rutherglen United Reformed Church, one of the few in the U.K. performing such ceremonies. They are banned in the Church of England and the Church in Wales.
“It is deeply offensive to see same-sex marriage celebrated in such a way on what is supposed to be a Christian devotional program,” said Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute.
“Those connected to the program are boasting that they are ‘not afraid of controversy.’ In fact, they seem to delight in it,” he said. “But for many who are housebound and unable to get to church, ‘Songs of Praise’ has been one of the few sources of orthodox Christian worship they may have had access to.
Hart said that by “featuring a same-sex ceremony, and for presenting those who may disagree as wrong-thinking, ‘Songs of Praise’ has alienated this core audience.”
The program allowed Wallace to boast that “Jesus preaches about love and inclusion, kindness, compassion,” without any reference to the Bible’s clear condemnation of homosexual behavior as sin.
One viewer wrote on social media, “Your coverage of the same sex wedding, was very weak and one sided, no verbal challenge or biblical view of this issue.”
Another said: “This can’t be serious, a gay wedding on songs of praise. Don’t you read the Bible, or do you rip out the pages that may upset your lifestyle. Making a mockery of the church.”
See Hart’s comments:
A BBC official said the program “tells the stories of Christians across all denominations in the U.K. and in so doing, aims to reflect the balance of opinions on different issues.”
“We featured the wedding of James and Ian to find out what it meant to them as Christians, to be able to take their vows in church,” the statement said.
The Christian Institute said that so far, 1,238 complaints have been dispatched to the network over the episode.
The Christian Institute’s deputy director for communications, Ciarán Kelly, said: “That’s a huge number of complaints. Whether the BBC have enough humility to take them on board remains to be seen.
“When the decision was taken to make this episode, producers must have known that the Christian faith teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman. With just 10 minutes’ research they would have discovered that 99.5 percent of places of worship in England and Wales don’t conduct same-sex weddings.”
