ABSTRACT
The One Show represented white, middle-class British people’s embarrassment about religion framed by references to declining Christian participation, the assumed religiosity of those from minority backgrounds, the assertiveness of atheism, and the challenge to religion of science. 1 The show encapsulated some of the key media discourses we have identified and analysed in this book, and in a light way reflected, but also stoked, the discussion about the place of religion in contemporary British society. As we showed in Chapter 1, in the late 2000s, the renewed visibility of public religion, the importance of religious and increasingly ‘non-religious’ identities, the growth of religious diversity and the rise of political Islam were avidly debated by academics and other intellectual commentators, with differing conclusions drawn on how to interpret the evidence.
