Thought for the Day to stay religious

A recent campaign has seen hundreds of people pledge to email the Today Programme about the Thought for the Day slot. The suggestion is that it should either be scrapped or be expanded to include humanist and atheist thinkers.

The iPM blog now contains a statement from Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer who calls it a genuinely difficult question. but his answer is to stick with the status quo.

Mr Damazer's argument is that the rest of the Today Programme is secular so Thought for the Day should be religious and allowing a secular viewpoint would make it just like the rest of the programme.

I don't think that holds up. No-one's suggesting that Thought for the Day should become just another opinion piece or interview. Certainly a humanist thinker wouldn't have a religious theme, but it would be a moral one. Many of the current speakers rarely make explicit mention of their religion in the slot.

This is a current position from Mr Damazer, but positions can change.