Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia, once described the Rev Colin Morris, who has died aged 89, as “the ideal parson”. It is not the first description that comes to mind of this Methodist minister, who was a fiery political preacher, fierce critic of governments and church, controversial broadcaster and, eventually and ironically, a senior manager at the BBC, though it does point to a cleric whose calling led to an intense involvement with the contemporary world and the people around him.

When Colin arrived as a young missionary in the Copperbelt region of what was then Northern Rhodesia in 1956, to work with white miners from South Africa, and to serve a congregation in the town of Chingola, he quickly became aware of the racial inequities in the country and made it clear that his church was open to people of all races.

His sermons attracted considerable controversy; in fact, they became notorious. Colin’s almost all-white congregation found his multiracial message hard to accept and numbers fell from hundreds to a mere handful after just four Sundays.

The colonial authorities disliked what Colin said and the European Mineworkers’ Union organised a public meeting to demand his expulsion from the country. However, Colin developed a skill for working within systems that he was to employ throughout his life, and he managed to escape the worst attentions of the security forces.

He first met Kaunda in 1957, when he went to his one-room township hut-cum-office and then for a second time when he visited him in Chingola prison. Kaunda’s vision for his country impressed Colin; the two men became close friends and wrote a number of books together. After independence, Kaunda conferred Zambia’s Order of Freedom upon Colin, in 1966.

In 1960, Colin became the president of the United Church of Central Africa, of which Northern Rhodesia was then part, and the first president of the United Church of Zambia in 1965, just after Zambia gained its independence. Both appointments reflect the high regard in which Colin was held, as Methodism was but one of many Christian denominations present in the region. Believing it was right to hand on the leadership of the church in Zambia to an African cleric, Colin returned to Britain in 1969.

During the 1970s, alongside his ministry day job, Colin became known to radio and television audiences, particularly in Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He was never far from controversy, and on one occasion rocked the establishment boat both at Broadcasting House and the Palace of Westminster.

Parliament was about to debate the bill that would become the 1971 Immigration Act, and introduce the principle of “patriality”: admission to Britain would only be allowed if a person’s parents or grandparents were British. Colin used Thought for the Day to deliver a devastating critique of the bill as alien to the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, “the greatest non-patrial of them all”. The huge row that followed was as much about Colin having spoken publicly on the subject before parliament had considered it (at the time, this was not done) as about perceived bias.

Born into a working-class family in Bolton, Lancashire (now in Greater Manchester), Colin was the son of Daniel, a miner, and Mary, a member of the Salvation Army. They already had two adult daughters, who doted on him.

He attended Bolton grammar school, and from 1947 to 1949 did his national service as a Royal Marine commando. Training for the Methodist ministry immediately followed at Hartley Victoria College in Manchester, during which time he read theology at the University of Manchester.

His first appointment was to the South Yorkshire coalfields, where his concern for industrial relations led to a three-year research period at Nuffield College, Oxford. At this early stage in his life, Colin demonstrated a loyalty to Methodism that lasted until his death.

When Colin won a studentship of Nuffield in 1952, the place had just been newly established as a postgraduate research college, and still had no university charter. In order to study at Nuffield, one had to be a member of an existing Oxford college. Colin chose Lincoln College because John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had been a fellow there in the early 18th century.

In Include Me Out (1968), he railed against the established church, and what he saw as the nitpicking discussions of Anglican-Methodist unity talks back in Britain. Details of the discussions landed on his doormat at a time when outside lay the body of a young Zambian who had died of hunger.

How on earth, Colin asked, can we Christians get our priorities so wrong that we end up putting far more effort into reorganising our own church structures than into practical care for our neighbours? In a much-remembered phrase, Colin said he would throw in his lot with whichever side in the unity debate made a £1 donation to Oxfam.

His 1969 appointment as minister of Wesley’s Chapel – the “cathedral” of Methodism – was therefore a surprise to the church at large and maybe even to Colin himself. However, Wesley’s pulpit in City Road, central London, was a great use of Colin’s brilliance as a preacher. Soon after his arrival at the church, the roof fell in and Colin, who had preached vigorously against the church’s concern for the survival of its own property, found himself in the invidious position of having to launch his own building fund.

He stayed at Wesley’s Chapel for four years, then moved on, probably with some relief, to head the overseas division of the Methodist Church, where he used his communication skills to promote contentious issues. He supported totally the World Council of Churches’ Programme to Combat Racism at a time when it threatened to split churches and congregations, and threw his weight behind the movement towards autonomy of the so-called “younger churches” overseas.

In 1976 he was elected president of the Methodist conference. His presidential address is remembered for its characteristic oratorical skill; Colin argued against any scheme for church unity based on the lowest common denominator. Such an approach, he complained, was likely to produce so feeble a church that it would invite the devil in to join the Trinity so that nobody was offended.

Colin joined the BBC’s officer class in 1978 as no less than the head of religious television programmes. Within a year he had become head of all religious broadcasting, and remained in this post until 1987, when he took over what was arguably the trickiest job in the BBC, controller of BBC Northern Ireland. Colin’s time at the corporation is remembered as one in which he fought for prime-time slots for religious programmes, and was, believe it or not, regarded as a safe pair of hands, as well as a wise and eirenic statesman.

After retirement from the BBC in 1990, Colin conceived and then, from 1991 to 1996, was the director of the Centre for Religious Communications at Westminster College, Oxford. He also continued to broadcast and write regularly; he confessed he could not contemplate stopping work.

Colin was never an “enfant terrible”, but he was a prophet in that he told the truth however unpalatable it might have been to his listeners. He was a pragmatist with a political perceptiveness and an impressive sense of timing. He never shunned conflicts, and in some ways thrived on them. But, for all his achievements and jobs, Colin remained one of Mr Wesley’s preachers. When, in later life, he returned to Zambia to make a radio programme and met a newly arrived young Methodist missionary, he said, wistfully: “I wish I was starting here all over again.”

In an Observer interview in 2000, Colin – financially secure in retirement – described how money made him uncomfortable and had led him to make compromises. “I had started off in the anti-capitalist mode but later I realised capitalism wasn’t going to go away. It would be hypocritical to condemn it utterly and draw a pension made by a capitalist system.”

He is survived by his third wife, Sandy (nee James), whom he married in 1985.

• Colin Manley Morris, cleric, writer and broadcaster, born 13 January 1929; died 20 May 2018