The future of Songs of Praise-style religious programmes on Belgian television has been thrown into doubt after a Catholic lay reader gave an on-screen Bible reading calling for women to be submissive to their husbands.



Sven Gatz, the minister for media in Flanders, called for a ban on religious services being shown by public broadcasters in response to the service aired on radio and the television station VRT.

The reading, made by a lay reader during a service at Sint-Servaasbasiliek in Grimbergen, from Ephesians 5:22-33 in the New Testament, said: “Women, be submissive to your husband as the husband to the Lord. For the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church. He gave his life to save her. In this way the woman must submit her husband to everything as the church is submissive to Christ.” The reader has not been named.

Gatz tweeted in response: “No outdated, woman-unfriendly statements … please. What if, for example, an imam would have said this?”

The minister, from the Flemish liberal party, Open VLD, later told the Belgian daily Het Nieuwsblad that he would make a renewed push for the abolition of religious services on publicly funded channels, a call he first made in December.

He said: “Of course I am not behind these kinds of statements. The fact that they come from an old book is not an argument for letting them go to our people. This is not of this time, and that it is broadcast on the VRT for the whole of Flanders is already completely crazy.”

Gatz added of his previous call for abolition: “My coalition partners CD&V and N-VA did not agree with that at the time. I hope that we can use incidents like this to reintroduce the debate.”

The representation of religion, language and culture on television is often a point of heated debate in Belgium, where French, Dutch and German are the officially recognised home languages.

The Dutch Bible Society, which also has Flemish members, said the excerpt read should not have been “ripped out of its context”.

A spokesman said: “The contested statement is preceded by a very different sentence: ‘Accept each other’s authority out of respect for Christ’. This indicates that this is a very different matter than legitimisation of the oppression of women by men.”

In a statement, TV channel VRT said it “continues to regard the broadcasting of eucharistic celebrations as a service to the viewers: both for religious viewers and for viewers who want to get acquainted with such a celebration and do not always agree with what is said in the church. The VRT has no problem with these broadcasts leading to debate and discussion.”

The BBC’s Songs of Praise, which has been broadcast since 1961, has been criticised in recent years for being out of step with British society. There have been calls for the Christian-focused programme to be multi-faith.