The BBC has come under pressure to remove blogs on its website forum pages referring to Jesus Christ as a ‘bastard’, according to the Daily Mail.
The development is the latest in a series of offensive comments the website has allowed to remain up despite their potential to insult millions.
With regards to the specific remarks about Jesus, the BBC has allowed the comments to remain up for a number of weeks despite complaints and appeals from various religious groups for them to be taken down.
Religious groups were also angered after it emerged that the BBC had at the same time taken steps to censor comments which could be interpreted as being offensive to Muslims, resulting in accusations of a misbalance in the moderating of the site.
In the postings which argued about the merits of various religions, one writer by the name of ‘colonelartist’ wrote: “Are you a christian? You do know that jesus had to hide all his short life he lived in those promised land because his tribesmen used to call him fatherless, ridiculed him for being a B-A-S-T-A-R-D...Jesus...was also persecuted because the jews would never accept as their Messiah a person whose father was missing...”
The comments remained despite numerous complaints by offended Christians, and were only taken down following phone calls by a British newspaper to the BBC.
Following the incident, The Daily Mail also reported that one website user wanted to see if BBC editors were allowing these offensive remarks to remain while blocking others.
He wrote: "No one can surpass the Muslims for denial of their role in Terrorism and Suicide bombing."
The remarks were almost immediately deleted.
A BBC spokesman has commented that posts were taken down if they were considered likely to “disrupt, provoke attack or offend others or are considered racist, homophobic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable”.
Last week the Church of England also criticised the BBC discussion sites, saying: “Voices of reason, compassion and charity seem to get little look-in.”
A Church spokesman said: “Discussion - including robustly critical discussion - of any faith's doctrines and practices is an important feature of civilised discourse. But deliberately or recklessly offensive denigration of those doctrines and practices is unacceptable.”
