It’s a time for rejoicing and merrymaking. Let the drinks flow and the revelry abound, for into the darkness has come a great light. Yes, the BBC is going to start taking religion seriously.

This genuinely is good news for all. Whether you’re as pious as Dot Cotton or find the whole thing as boring as John Humphrys does, we should all benefit from our national broadcaster taking it upon itself to address something of a crisis in Britain: a burgeoning ignorance of religion. And at this particular point in history, it can offer no more important service to the public.

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It is an ignorance far too many are proud to profess. It’s the acceptable face of philistinism. A failure to understand religion is a failure to understand humanity and culture. Rejecting religion in its myriad manifestations is one thing, but rejecting the opportunity to learn more about it is intellectual incuriosity at its worst. We owe it to ourselves at least to make an effort to explore this phenomenon that, for better or worse, has been integral to human civilisation for millennia.

And it is an ignorance that has tangible effects. It enables the demonisation of Muslims. It fuels antisemitism. It fosters all manner of bigotry and prejudice. It feeds fanaticism: Islamic State has thrived off it. It is an ignorance that is as prevalent among believers as it is among atheists; it lies at the heart of sectarianism. There is surely nothing to be lost and much to gain by educating ourselves.

My hope is that the BBC finds imaginative ways to explore the richness to be found in every faith tradition. To talk even of a single Christian denomination in monolithic terms is misleading: there is no single Anglicanism or Roman Catholicism, let alone a single Christianity. There is similar diversity among other faiths. And if this is all true, then to talk in sweeping terms of “religion” or “religious people” is surely misguided too. These labels needs challenging and breaking down; they are used too frequently and too lazily, and often with a desire to create a “them” by which we can define an “us”.

We should also welcome the suggestion that different faith traditions should be represented across a wide range of the BBC’s programmes. The old idea of the “God slot”, a particular part of the schedule reserved for religious broadcasting, serves no one: it gives the impression that faith can be easily tucked away or walled in, which is not how it is experienced, either personally or culturally. It smacks both of special privilege and a kind of embarrassment. And hopefully this can liberate Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, opening it up to Humanist and other atheistic perspectives.

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But perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the BBC’s new approach to theism are anti-theists. At their best, atheistic and anti-theistic thought and polemic are informed by a profound understanding of religious belief. Friedrich Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity are so brilliant and potent because, having at one point studied theology in the hope of becoming a minister in the church, he had a deep appreciation of the subject. A keen and detailed understanding of religion also informed the works of Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx; they are insightful and full-blooded as a result. The offhand dismissiveness evident in the invective of, say, Richard Dawkins is puny and pallid by comparison. I cannot be the only Christian who seeks powerful and penetrating challenges to their faith but finds much of modern atheistic thought disappointingly wanting.

We live in a world where 84% of our fellow humans are affiliated to a religion. And that number is projected not to fall in the coming decades, but to rise. Religion is not going away, not just yet. The BBC is in a unique position to help us understand the world better, and that means understanding religion better. There can be few more appropriate uses of the licence fee. Alleluia.

• Peter Ormerod is a freelance journalist