BBC Religion Editor Martin Bashir On Why Christianity is Still Relevant to the Masses

Bashir describes his conversion to Christianity – and why Easter isn’t just about chocolate

by Martin Bashir

If Christmas is now a secular celebration – described by one newspaper as a season marked by “buying, boozing and bonking” – then what do we make of Easter? Is Holy Week more about chocolate eggs than the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ?

And since the latest British Social Attitudes survey says that more than half (53 per cent) of the British public now describe themselves as having “no religion”, isn’t it time to consign these Christian festivals to history?

Should we accept the advice offered by an advertising campaign on the side of London buses in 2008 that read, “There’s probably no God – now stop worrying and enjoy your life”?

These are some of the questions that I’ve been grappling with since I returned to the UK in 2016, after working for 12 years as a news broadcaster in New York, and became the BBC’s religion editor.

The business of journalism demands objectivity and fairness, but there is no such thing as perfect impartiality because all of us carry our own cultural freight, and I’m no different. My parents came to Britain from Pakistan in 1951, my father having served with the Royal Navy throughout the Second World War.

They would describe themselves as liberal Muslims, firmly embracing of British culture, and did not insist upon attendance at a mosque beyond my tenth birthday. That experience piqued an early interest in theology and philosophy and I found myself embracing the Christian faith in my late teens after attending a…