Shots have been fired at the religious slot 'Thought for the Day' (TFTD), the weekday feature on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Presenter John Humphrys called the segment 'inappropriate' and 'deeply boring'; a 'sermon' not relevant to the news programme surrounding it.
But as several commentators have hit back, the slot plays a crucial role in dignifying Britain's diverse religious heritage and making rare space for life's spiritual dimension. In a time when religion remains decisive but frequently misunderstood, TFTD is needed now more than ever.
Humphrys suggested that 'three minutes of uninterrupted religion' was not appropriate for the Today schedule, but others would see three minutes as a meagre concession amidst otherwise dominantly secular content. Religion has made so much of the world we live in today, and certainly hasn't vanished yet – TFTD offers a nod to that past and present reality. Its 'sermons' are hardly incendiary or proselytising pieces, but give a (often challengingly) brief 'reflection' on faith in the present day.
As Today programme contributor Mishal Husain pushed back to Humphrys in their Radio Times discussion, the format breaks up the relentless new cycle, and offers a change of pace and direction. Some 'thoughts' will not be to everyone's taste but they can also provide a message that, as Nick Robinson put it, is 'just profound'.
Anglican Bishop Nick Baines criticised the 'arrogance' and 'ignorance' in Humphrys' attack. Defending TFTD on his blog, he wrote: 'Underlying the protests against Thought for the Day (so hackneyed they are in themselves boring to anyone with a brain) is what I call the "myth of neutrality". I am embarrassed to have to say it again. This myth, so effortlessly held by so many, is that there is a neutral space held by secular humanists, leaving those who have a religious world view somewhere up the loony scale.
'According to this assumption, a religious world view is so odd that it is potentially dangerous and has no place in the public square it should be imprisoned in the sphere of the "private"'.
The programme, he said, is 'not about privileging religious nutcases in order to appease an irrelevant subculture', nor simply 'presenting religious views' but rather 'looking at the world through a religious lens, opening up perspectives that subvert the unconscious (or conscious) prejudices about why the world is the way it is – shining a different light on world events that the unargued for and unarticulated secular humanist assumptions undergirding the rest of the programme miss.'
In an era when religion, frequently caught up amid extremism and scandal, continues to make headlines, understanding it remains essential. Most of the world's population identifies with a religious perspective, one that can't simply be isolated into a private sphere set apart from the rest of their lives. That is the point of beliefs, 'religious' or otherwise, they aren't incidental - they often define us.
To understand that perspective is to grow wiser and more sympathetic to the reality we live in. Religious groups are often decried as 'intolerant', but it's a strange kind of secular intolerance that apparently insists that the religious mindset be vanquished from public debate.
TFTD isn't perfect, like any format it can always be improved. Perhaps in an increasingly pluralistic society, TFTD should better represent non-Christian religions – that is a debate worth having. But to simply dismiss those voices as 'boring' is ungenerous to say the least: society needs diverse perspectives on life's complexity - and the humility to hear them - today more than ever.
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