The Nativity – pro-Christian bias from Aunty or standard practice?

Paid up God-botherers are in a joyful froth thanks to The Nativity – BBC 1’s four-parter. Yet why such ecstasy over what ought to be expected from a broadcasting company serving a cluster of nations with their heritage rooted on the good book from which the nativity story comes?

Why? First, because believers tend to have a severe allergic reaction to any hint that the broadcast media are to turn their attention to matters of faith. Coming quickly to the surface are residual memories of dismissive theologians drowning in a sea of faith and unbelief.

Second, the goal posts have moved. Christianity now has to stand in line – often some way to the back – when it comes to receiving a fair hearing. At least, that’s the perception of many of the faithful.

This time, however, things have gone differently. Though it was not planned that way. Screen writer Tony Jordan began his diligent research for The Nativity by enquiring of historians and theologians – who assured him it was all a mythtake. That it never happened. Which is how the story could have ended up – again.

But Tony had the nouse to realise that just because there are different versions of an event it doesn’t mean there was no event in the first place. Indeed, the very lack of collusion could be seen as authentication rather than the opposite.

And so it came to pass, on a television set near most of us, that the simple story of a king born in a stable, as the light of the world, came to be told. With no hint that Mary and Joseph had failed to take precautions. Or the angle Gabriel’s visit was the hallucination of a pubescent child under too much stress.

All with the result that the believers of the land stand amazed and grateful for what, it seems to me, ought to have been the way it was in any case.

However, there is another view – articulately expressed by the religious correspondent of The Times, Ruth Gledhill. Ruth has my great respect as a journalist. This is despite her having been a secret church visitor to a service I lead – giving the event seven for architecture but only three for spirituality. And making her assessment while opting out of the group meditation and confession, which didn’t seem to be a very fair dip of the litmus paper.

Yet, in The Times, Ruth says of The Nativity, ‘Disturbingly, it might also be one of the best evangelistic tools the Christian church could ever have hoped for’. ‘Disturbingly’? Why ‘disturbingly’ that the BBC’s telling of a great story with no negative spin should be good news for the church? After all, the opposite could only be bad news for the Church and is that what the BBC should be about?

Equally telling, in the same Times piece, comes the assertion that, if the BBC is ‘not to be open to accusations of pro-Christian bias’, it must now do something similar for other faiths and perhaps even for secularists.

Get that. The BBC fail to do a hatchet job on the Christian story and this is to be perceived as ‘pro-Christian’. Meanwhile, has Aunty ever done anything other than tug a deferential forelock in the direction of all the other great world faiths and the minor ones too come to that.

So there we have it. The churches are on cloud nine due to getting nothing more than what ought to be the case, and what any of the other world religions would get. And onlookers see this as Christianity being treated with special care.

This is almost as unbelievable as some find the nativity story itself.

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