London, England - The BBC harbours an anti-religious attitude, its correspondents have little understanding of religious issues and soaps such as EastEnders ridicule religion, the House of Lords select committee considering the future of the corporation heard today.
The BBC was also attacked by members of the committee for treating religion "with kid gloves" and for employing reporters who tried to "fluff their way through complicated matters".
Representatives of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faiths - all broadcasters and contributors to BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day - as well as members of the British Humanist Association gave oral evidence about the coverage of faith and the role of religious broadcasting to the committee on the BBC charter review.
Rev Joel Edwards, the general director of the Evangelical Alliance UK and an honorary canon of St Paul's Cathedral, was critical of what he called a "pervasive anti-religious attitude that works very vigorously in editing suites [of the BBC]" and that "the interests of sensationalism" often took over.
The anti-religious attitude is apparent in the way religion is featured in the BBC's entertainment output, said Dr Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad from the department of religious studies at the University of Lancaster.
He said its soaps "tend to use stereotypes - the Christians are mad fundamentalists, the Hindus are in arranged marriages".
Dr Indarjit Singh, the editor of the Sikh Messenger and patron of the World Congress of Faiths, said: "EastEnders' Dot Cotton is an example. She quotes endlessly from the Bible and it ridicules [religion] to some extent."
Instead, Dr Singh argued, the BBC should use its resources to educate people about religion in order to combat prejudice.
"The BBC should look at the removal of ignorance about religion," said Dr Singh.
"We need to know and understand what essential beliefs are and how they contribute to society. The BBC should do a lot more of that. It is so easy in atmosphere of ignorance for prejudice to arise."
He added that he would like to see the BBC take a more "robust" approach to religion, tackling wrongdoing and weeding out wrong practices in religions.
The representatives from the faith communities urged the committee for a formal public service commitment to the fair reflection of religion in broadcasting, across the output, not just in religious programmes, to be set down in the BBC's charter and that Ofcom should preside over what is "fair".
The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Tom Butler, said he did not want more specifically religious programming, but that what exists should be moved to more prominent slots in the schedule.
He also argued that far from a need for non-religious groups such as the Humanist Association to be given time on television and radio to give a balance of views, he said they should be given less time.
"They have an enormous amount of time because the standard mindset of the media, particularly broadcast services, is secular humanism and that mindset is reflected in output. So perhaps it needs attention because it is counter-cultural in society."
However, one select committee member, Lord Maxton, said "religion is treated at the BBC with kid gloves and is rarely criticised".
And another member, Lord Peston, said he thought claims that the BBC was against religion were "ridiculous".
However, he agreed there was not enough knowledge about religion at the corporatio.
"The media is full of people trying to fluff their way through very complicated matters," he said.
The Rt Rev Butler added that without understanding of religion "grave errors" occurred about world affairs and told the committee that BBC staff lacked sufficient "depth of knowledge" about religion.
He said he had been asked by BBC reporters: "Bishops, what questions should I ask?"
Dr Ram-Prasad said the BBC repeatedly made a fundamental error in reporting the India-Pakistan conflict as a clash of religions, because its reporters lacked adequate understanding of the situation.
Dr Mona Siddiqui, the chair of the Scottish religious advisory committee, argued for the BBC to present religion in a way people can identify with, to "make programmes about the way people live and believe" and to show how religion "sits side-by-side in contemporary debates".
She said: "People are hungry for real debate, they want to know how religion makes a person tick."
The BBC's coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II, the series The Monastery and reporting of the rise of fundamentalism in the American right were singled out as things the BBC had covered well.
The committee also heard from Hanne Stinson, the executive director of the British Humanist Association, which represents the interests of non-religious people.
Ms Stinson said there was a growing number of people with no religious beliefs who share humanist beliefs but would not call themselves humanists, simply because they do not know the name, "and the BBC is partly to blame for that".
She disputed the claim that the large majority of the BBC's coverage was secular.
"The BBC claims a small percentage of its coverage is religious and the rest is secular. We say a small percentage is religious and the rest is general, for everybody. The gap is positive non-religious belief," she said.
Her colleague, David Pollock, told the committee that the BBC was breaching the law in not giving humanism equal standing with other belief systems.
"We are objecting not to the existence of religious broadcasting ... we object to the BBC quite deliberately ignoring the requirements of the Human Rights Act and the Communications Act to treat as equal religions and beliefs across the spectrum ... the government says humanism is a belief and the BBC has ignored all of that," he said.
The hearing was a second tier of inquiries into religion, sport, regional broadcasting and the World Service being carried out following the publication of the Lords' report published on yesterday, which called the government's plans for the BBC confusing and misguided, and called for a bigger role for media regulator Ofcom in overseeing the corporation.