CCTV very influential, says CCTV
In the wake of the BBC’s rejection of the JS:TO complaints, The Christian Congress for Traditional Values has published a hilariously upbeat news release on its website.
It concerns Mark Thompson’s robust defence of the BBC in a speech he gave three weeks ago – a speech which enraged John Beyer and Stephen Green because of Thompson’s unapologetic stance on the JS:TO broadcast and determination “not to be swayed by short-run moral panics”. CCTV ignore the thrust of the message to focus on the mention Thompson made of the fact that “we live in a country where more that 70% of the population describe themselves as Christian.” This apparently justifies the story title: “CCTV forces BBC bosses to acknowledge Christian majority”.
THE IMPACT of The CCTV campaign to raise awareness that the vast majority of British citizens regard themselves as Christian is succeeding.
They seem to think that Thompson would not have been aware of the high proportion of “Christian” box-tickers in the National Census had it not been for the “sheer persistency” of CCTV in “getting across the perceptive [sic] that Christians are in the majority and cannot be ignored”.
They truly are a force to be reckoned with, aren’t they?
If you want more evidence of the cluelessness of CCTV, try asking why their website has such a wierdly worded address.
The answer may be that there’s a US cable TV station called Christian Music TV which also wants to ‘crusade’ (i.e. separate the semi-literate from their wallets) in the UK. Presumably CCTV realise that fundamentalists would get confused by as many as two organisations with ‘C’ and ‘TV’ in the shortened title!
CMTV’s first ‘campaign’ was an attempt to get bored young fundies and BNP strays to harrass gay switchboards. Take a look at these saddoes at http://www.christianmusictv.com/index.htm or http://www.christianmusictv.com/anti_christian_groups.htm. if you want to see just how dumb such ‘pressure groups’ can get.
While I hate to nitpick, the fact that 72% of the population described themselves as Christian in the last census has been given an awful lot of publicity by CCTV and CV, largely because it appears to be the only statistic they can find to back up their dubious claim to majority support.
But isnt it still a significant statistic in determining the nature of the Britain which the BBC represents, Adam?
What other contingency in Britain claims as much as 72%?
No, no it isn’t.
A far more relevant statistic would be how many people go to Church, which is only a fraction of the number whose only christian act is to tick a box once a decade and to stuff themselves silly on chocolate every easter.
If this had any worth, particularly in determining televisual output, then the people of Brighton could reasonably demand that 2% of broadcasting was given over to Jedi issues
The Census question has been called in to doubt for being extemely badly worded – it could well have been said to been asking what sort of ethnic background you originate from. I myself put Roman Catholic on it, despite the fact I don’t believe a word of it.
A recent YouGov poll has suggested that the actual level of people who actually believe in Christianity is a mere 42% – putting them in a minority, and, as has already been mentioned, I’d question how Christian the 38% or so of those who don’t even attend Church are.
Phazer
What is lacking is any evidence re the beliefs of the non-churchgoing ‘Christians’. It stands to reason that, rather than jumping to conclusions about them, we must await further research. ‘My uncle ticked Christian, and his only claim to Christian fame is that he pigs himself on Easter Eggs’ dont count as research, cos research needs a significant sample.
You want figures? well here you are then.
The CofE’s own figures… (source: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr0106.html)
According to them (and let’s face it, although they have the best access to the raw data, they would experience benefit in the figures being as large as possible, so it’s not exactly completely reliable data) 1.2 million people attended a CofE church once a week or more in 2003. Given that the population of Britain is about 60 million, that gives a regular CofE-going percentage of about 2.8% of the country.
http://www.teal.org.uk/stats/key.htm Gives figures (although many of them are 10-15 years old) showing that only 42% of UK church-goers read the bible outside of church even once a year. It also has figures from 1995 of 4 million church-goers in the UK and declining all the time. Taking the 1995 figures, with the approximate UK population at the time of 58 million, that gives a church-going percentage of about 6.9% for all christian churches. The number of churchgoers has declined since then.
As an interesting contrast, the combined average weekly attendance at professional football matches in England and Soctland last season was 1.6 million. (source: http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm). This, of course is far from the total number of football fans in the country, given the far vaster numbers who watch footy on telly and who play the sport as well.
The football comparrisson is really irrelevant though, except to show that the CofE is less popular than football and should thus be disestablished. What is relevant is that less than 10% of the people who ticked the christian box in the census (your lot’s beloved 72% figure) actually engage in acts of christian worship, and of those, only about 2 in 5 read the bible outside of church even once a year. Therefore, I think that we can safely say that the claim that 72% of the public are christians is spurious at best.
I agree with you that the football comparison is irrelevant. After all, people pay a lot to go to matches, but nothing to go to church.
I also agree that most surveys put churchgoers at 7-10%.
If it were proven that only 7-10% of the population were genuinely good/honest people (whether or not they were Christian), would you think it was time to stop considerations of goodness and honesty affecting what we allow on tv?
If only 7-10% of the population were good/honest (and you seem to be subtly equivocating that with being a churchgoing christian, but I’ll let that slide), then the other 90-odd % of the population could justifiably argue that they should not be forced only to have only what this good/honest proportion want to watch on their tellies. Of course, this does beg the question how one would prove this figure, after all, you say elsewhere that proof is a mathematical concept.
Anyway, what my figures show is that your claim to have 72% backing for your repressive campaign of censorship based on not offending gullibles is utterly bogus. There is no way that your 7% of the population should be able to restrict the output of all TV programmes. By all means protest about what is produced from the religious broadcasting unit, after all, that’s your special little subsection of the bbc world, but leave the rest of us alone.
Also, if you made all football matches free, you can be certain that the number of attendees would rise above the number of church-goers. After all, the BBC has more viewers for its FA Cup matches than attend church even once a month.
‘Subtly equivocating that with being a churchgoing Christian’? Then how come I said ‘whether or not they were Christian’?
Re football matches: you are echoing the point I made myself.
‘Repressive’ is a word that prejudges the issue. The issue is precisely whether there can be benefit in airing such material. Use of the word ‘repressive’ forestalls the necessary debate on that topic. Nor can the rights and wrongs of the debate be decided by head-count. Not all have considered the issues equally carefully. Not all want to. Not all are of equal experience, mental capacity etc etc..
One thing we certainly cant presuppose is that churchgoing Christians and those who object to such material are precisely the same group of ppl. What about the Muslims for example. What about Christians who dont go to church (e.g. the housebound) but agree – or even who do go but disagree?
On the good/honest point, I dont understand your stance at all. Since if the words good and honest mean anything, it is clearly better (by definition) to follow what the good people prescribe than what those not in that class prescribe. Pls explain?
but who says that they’re good? presumably they do. this is how soi disant moral guardians like grren and massah beyer start out.
there is no debate about whether there’s any benefit in airing that which you don’t wish to be seen on the tv screen. There’s almost no benefit in anything that’s ever been shown on telly or ever will. Some things offend some people, other things offend others. if nobody was ever to be offended by anything, then we’d have blank screens all the time