Britain's Channel 4 Charged With Mocking Christian Faith
By Jeremy Reynalds (12/27/04)
Britain's Channel Four television station has come under fire from a leading evangelical Christian after running an advertisement depicting the Last Supper as a drunken brawl.
Peter Kerridge, Chief Executive of Britain's Premier Christian Radio, has made a formal complaint to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over the controversial ad, which is a promotion for the Channel 4 program "Shameless."
A request for comment to Channel Four was not immediately returned.
The ad is being displayed nationwide on British billboards, as well as in the station's Christmas publicity materials.
Channel 4 describes the show "Shameless" on its web site
(www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S/shameless/index.html) as "packed with sex, drugs, gratuitous violence, love and scams. Chaos ensues with more tales of how one extraordinary family goes about its normal everyday life."
Kerridge commented in a press release, "Channel 4 (has) gone too far with this cynical publicity stunt - and will offend millions of people through it. Portraying a sacred moment in Christian history as a drunken scuffle is blasphemous and deeply offensive to Christians. This advert is extremely cynical - shameless in fact; the station is clearly confident that it can get away with an advertisement like this, and will also be aware of the secondary publicity that complaints like mine will give them. I therefore call on the ASA to hand out the stiffest penalty to the station; one that takes into account the rewards of this secondary publicity."
Kerridge continued, "Once again the Christian faith has been publicly mocked - because the marketing men know they can get away with it. Would the station dare show the Prophet Muhammad in a similar light, I wonder? Of course not."
The comments from Kerridge come in a week during which religious controversy has dominated British headlines. According to the same release, a Birmingham theater has been the subject of protests this week after showing the play "Behzti," which is offensive to the Sikh faith.
According to the release from Premier, 73% of respondents to an online station poll said that they'd been offended by this and other anti religious marketing recently.
When asked the question "Have you been offended by something you regard as ‘blasphemous' in the media this Christmas?" visitors to the website voted "Yes" by a margin of three to one.
For additional information go to www.premier.org.uk
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