FaithWorld

The BBC is coming in for flak about its religious coverage, much of it centring on its incoming head of religious broadcasting.

The publicly funded broadcaster has appointed Aaqil Ahmed from Channel 4,  a move that has dismayed a Church of England member who is proposing to discuss the matter at the church's General Synod, the church's parliament.

Nigel Holmes, a former BBC employee and lay member of the synod, has tabled a private members' motion for the upcoming meeting in July.

In a document to go with the motion, which has to attract 100 signatures to be discussed, he accused Ahmed of heading up a Channel 4 religious department that was sensationalist and biased against Christianity.

"Many of the Channel 4 programmes concerned with Christianity, in contrast to those featuring other faiths, seem to be of a sensationalist or unduly critical nature," he wrote.

Discussions between the British premier and monarch to reverse religious discriminatory laws going back 300 years have sparked consternation in a conservative newspaper while attracting little response from the Roman Catholic church.

Proposed changes of the 1701 Act of Settlement would allow a future king or queen to marry a Roman Catholic, but would still preclude a royal of that faith becoming monarch.

It would also give female heirs an equal claim to the throne.

Nevertheless, Steve Doughty writing an analysis piece in the Daily Mail suggested it was an attack on Britain's constitution, heralding the end of the monarchy as we know it and the Church of England.