FOR THE most part, radio during Holy Week was its usual self-absorbed secular self. According to station, you could have celebrity gossip; punch-up politics; the paranoid obsessions of men on their mobiles, convinced that the world is part of a massive conspiracy that they alone are able to uncover; and relaxing classical pop or the serious version. There are no prizes for labelling the sources.
Radio 4, however, still has something of the spirit of Lord Reith breathing through it. It had an Easter hymn before the news on Sunday morning, and, in general, listeners would have been hard-pressed to miss the fact that this was Holy Week, that Friday was Good Friday, and that Sunday was Easter Day. So, plaudits where plaudits are due — and that includes Radio 2, which had an Easter-flavoured Good Morning Sunday and the usual gems in Pause for Thought (the religious programme with by far the biggest audience in the UK).
The Today programme treated its three million listeners to a robust but fair interview with an American professor who was touring Britain with the Bishop of Durham arguing for the truth of the resurrection. It was unusual to hear what we might call a religious “truth claim” being treated seriously, although I doubt there were many converts. Unbelief can be as stubborn as faith.
The Sunday programme, now in its 37th year, laced its usual lively mix of religious news with two Easter items. Roger Bolton and the Roman Catholic film critic Fr Peter Malone discussed the inevitable problems faced by an actor portraying Jesus on screen. The issue was topical for many listeners, who might well have been watching The Passion on BBC1 during Holy Week.
To do this play-cycle meant that someone had to portray the man whom millions of people believe is the Son of God. How, Roger Bolton asked, can any actor represent a man who was also divine? Fr Malone’s answer, in summary, was “with difficulty”, but he thought the clue was to convey something of Jesus’s charisma — the hint, as it were, that this man was more than ordinarily human.
Easter also featured in a real collector’s piece, an ecclesiastical anorak’s dream: why was Easter so early this year? The Bishop of Norwich gave us the answer, although it was doubtful whether those just back from an Easter vigil in a snowstorm were reassured by equinoxes or Julian calendars. Still, there was reassurance in the fact that it will never happen again in the lifetime of most of us.
For the rest, Sunday did its usual thorough journalistic job on the week’s religious news. “Faith hate” — the London vicar assaulted in his churchyard — raised the question whether hating Christians was somehow understandable, whereas hating Muslims, for instance, was always deplorable. Kevin Bouquet offered a sobering insight into the fast-fading presence of Christians in Iraq, picked on because they are wrongly identified with the “Christian” coalition invaders. Now that really does sound like “faith hate”.
Once again, Sunday offered a glimpse of the world of faith through the eyes of journalists, and a glimpse of the world of doubt through the eyes of believers. The producer, Jennifer Daniel, can take credit for a job well done.
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