THE TELEGRAPH: Until recently, people who wrote letters protesting about insults to decency, the Royal Family, God, and so on, often used to end with the words: "Is nothing sacred?" I notice that they have mostly given up doing so. This must be because, in British public space today, the answer to their question is so clearly: "No - nothing at all."
This week, the High Court upheld a district judge's decision to refuse an attempt to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy in broadcasting Jerry Springer - The Opera. In the show, an adult Jesus was depicted as wearing a nappy.
The judges were Mr Justice Collins, who is the son of the famous nuclear disarmer, Canon Collins, and Lord Justice Hughes, who lists "bellringing" as one of his recreations in Who's Who. It seems unlikely that either is ignorant of, or unsympathetic to, the claims of Christianity. But both took the view that, in modern society, an attack on Christianity (which, by the way, they thought Jerry Springer - The Opera was not) did not necessarily endanger society. They said that "the identity of Church and state and the near universality of Christian conviction in this country" no longer existed. Hell will freeze before a BBC Mohammed film >>> By Charles Moore
Mark Alexander
