More TV vicar?

I tuned into this story on radio 4 this morning and listened to a couple of commentators speak on the subject, in summary some members of the general synod (the governing body of the Church of England) are claiming that the BBC is "marginalising" religion by not putting enough of it on the telly. The facts of the matter are that this year there will be a total of 164 hours of religious broadcasting and by law the BBC is required to show 110 i.e. they are showing roughly 50% more than they need to.

I don't have any particular problem with religious broadcasting, there are plenty of channels to choose from if I'm not interested in it, although usually I am (apart from songs of praise which is cringe-worthy) The historical and philosophy based programs aren't bad and I found the religious perspectives of Darwin and evolution that were aired last year (during the 150th anniversary) interesting even though I thought they were mostly exploring delusional points of view (angels on the head of a pin kinds of things). What I do object to however is the attitude of the Church, the presumption of entitlement when equally prevalent viewpoints on these matters are not given much airtime at all and certainly don't have any legal minimum. Both speakers this morning came at the discussion from the perspective of "this is a Christian country therefore..." certainly we have a culturally Christian history but if you think about it we also have a culturally racist history too but we aren't forced to sit through 110 hours of programs on racism, this is a classic appeal to authority and tradition, hardly reflective of the secular society we actually live in.

I suppose what I'm arguing for is the proper separation of Church and the apparatus of state, I see no justification for it in the current age although the speakers on the program when confronted with this point played the "ethics" card. It always amuses me when ethics are bundled in with religion, in fact the BBC department responsible for this programming is called "Religion and Ethics", as if religion has some kind of monopoly on morality. In reality religion goes with ethics like MP's go with expenses, the relationship is an exploitative one, it's hard if not impossible to think of a recent ethical advance that hasn't been fought for teeth and nail against dogmatic opposition from the religious establishment.