Alan Bookbinder

From Philosopedia

Bookbinder, Alan (1956 - )

Bookbinder in 2001 became the British Broadcasting Company’s first head of religious broadcasting who does not believe in God, “prompting panic among the pious.” He has described himself as “an open-hearted, open-minded agnostic,” or, alternatively, “a godless, amoral soul-destroyer and corrupter of the innocent.” Asked to explain, he replied, “Morality's all relative these days, and there's no such thing as good or evil, as Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was saying to me only the other day.”

Bookbinder’s predecessor, the Reverend Ernest Rea, had resigned accusing his employers of “dancing to a secular tune” and now was being replaced by the son of a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother who admittedly had no “personal experience of god, of an absolute, or supreme being.”

“God cannot be treated as one manager among many at the executive board table,” complained John Barton, archdeacon of Aston. The Church of England, although sometimes described theologically as “moderately relaxed,” has been scandalized by Bookbinder, a divorcee who on one BBC science program, “The Human Body,” featured the sexual organs and their workings.

{The London Guardian, 13 July 2001}