The
new chairman of the BBC has said that many leading atheists are
“intolerant” of religion.

Lord
Patten of Barnes, who headed up the Independent Commission on Policing for
Northern Ireland minister and is a former Cabinet Minister, said that he felt
he was regarded as “peculiar” over his religious faith. Lord Patten
is a practicing Catholic.

His
comments come amid growing controversy over the freedom of religious belief,
which last week saw a Christian electrician threatened with the sack for
displaying a cross in his van.

Lord
Patten, a Conservative peer who will take control of the BBC Trust next month,
is the highest-profile political figure to enter the debate over what is seen
as a creeping attempt to remove Christianity from public life.

In
a lecture delivered last week at Our Lady of Grace and St Edward in Chiswick,
called ‘Personal Faith and Public Service: Christian witness in the wider
world’, Lord Patten said the attitude of leading secularists to the Pope’s
visit to the UK last year dismayed him.

Richard
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist campaigners, called for Pope
Benedict XVI to be arrested when he came to Britain last year over the Catholic
Church’s record on child abuse, and demonstrations were held in London to
protest at state funding for the papal visit.

Some
of the arguments put forward by secularists against the Pope’s visit were
“lacking in intellectualism and were extraordinarily mean-spirited” said
Lord Patten, who oversaw the Government’s preparations for the papal trip.

“I’m
surprised the atheists didn’t have better arguments [against the Pope’s
visit].”

Those
who rejected religious belief were hypocritical to portray religious people as
being narrow-minded given the level of aggression they have displayed to
Christians, he added.

“It
is curious that atheists have proved to be so intolerant of those who have a
faith,” he said.

“Their
books would be a lot shorter if they couldn’t refer to the Spanish Inquisition,
but it is them who tend to have a level of Castillian intolerance about
them.”

The
former governor of Hong Kong and current chancellor of Oxford University, who
described himself as a cradle Catholic, said his own experience was that people
looked down on him intellectually for having religious belief

He
said: “It makes people think I’m peculiar and lack intellectual fibres because
I don’t have any doubts about my faith, but I’d be terrified to have
doubts.”

A
report earlier this year, endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, warned that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen
as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a
period of “exceptional challenge”.

Fears
have been growing that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of
discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for
sharing their beliefs.

Last
week, Colin Atkinson, an electrician, was summoned to a disciplinary hearing by
his employers for displaying a small palm cross on the dashboard of his company
van – but eventually allowed to keep the symbol of his religion.

However,
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was alarmed
by Lord Patten’s criticism of secularists and questioned whether he could
remain impartial in his role as chairman of the BBC Trust, which is designed to
represent the concerns of licence-fee payers.

“Lord
Patten’s comments don’t bode well for his position as chairman of the BBC
Trust,” he said.

Over
recent years, the BBC has upset Christians by broadcasting the controversial
Jerry Springer the Opera, which depicted Jesus in a nappy, and commissioning a
cartoon featuring an infantile Pope bouncing on a pogo stick.

Church
leaders have raised fears that the BBC has become increasingly hostile to
Christianity, but last year the corporation rejected calls from secularists for
atheists to be included on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.