Our media poses two threats on religious matters: pedestrian opinion and fallacious logic. Let the experts speak. As for the rest of us, by all means let’s also talk. Debate must never die. But it would be really nice to begin by saying that we are not the experts.

It is Easter Sunday, the culmination of a week thick with religion. There is no better time to turn the spotlight on how our media covers religion.

We have no shortage of religious publications, and a good sprinkle of broadcast channels catering exclusively for a religious-caring audience. There is little quarrel that these channels offer sound religious guidance. Programme hosts are mostly experts in religion. Either that or the channels seek expert religious opinion.

But trouble begins when the channels feature programme hosts that have no clue what sound religion is, or when strictly secular publications trespass into the religious field.

A good place to begin is Radio Waumini’s late afternoon programmes during the week, Radio Ramogi’s morning and night call-ins, and the Sunday Nation’s Fifth Columnist.

Radio Waumini now features excellent programmes that adequately nourish its largely Catholic audience. But with all due respect, the good station must filter the message aired by its young, lay hosts. These presenters frequently offer unsolicited, uninformed "theological" views on controversial moral topics. Without some sort of disclaimer, this is likely to steer a vulnerable audience off course. There is a real danger of broadcasting false piety.

Similar danger is courted when Radio Ramogi okays pedestrian religious opinion on social issues.

People would be in the middle of a heated debate on polygamy or wife inheritance and a call comes in from some rural pastor who clearly never saw the inside of a Standard Seven classroom. The authoritative pastor would promptly begin to support polygamy or wife inheritance, basing his entirely fallacious arguments on warped biblical reading.

No problem. The airwaves are all about freedom of speech. Everyone is entitled to be heard. But the real shocker arrives when the studio programme host blurts out, "Listeners, you’ve heard it from the pastor’s mouth. Wife inheritance is ok." And that, based on random biblical citations that the presenter has no idea of, is entirely absurd.

The likely victim here is an audience that has never enjoyed a stint of training in critical thinking, even at high school level. But danger of a totally different kind looms in the views of the Sunday Nation’s Fifth Columnist.

Clearly, the Fifth Columnist does not speak to people of ordinary education. Opinions here are consistently thoroughly informed, technically articulated, and boldly delivered. Until religion.

The Fifth Columnist is on record that he does not believe in any religion. Whenever he discusses religion, therefore, his arguments are purely academic, totally devoid of pious sentiments. It is a perfect "classroom" for religion scholars. But it is serious danger for anyone seeking religious insight.

To his credit, the columnist does not assume any religious authority. He does not claim to pass for an expert in religion. He merely displays a spectacular reading habit. The result is a batch of fresh air into otherwise stiff, pious religious debate. Before passing sentence in this department, however, the Fifth Columnist really ought to seek the opinion of experts.

Certainly, ‘The Maverick’ does not wish to pass for a biblical expert. But from years of formal training in Sacred Theology, he knows a little to tell that last Sunday Nation’s topic, "What does the Bible ordain on abortion?" was cleverly misleading.

"The Catholic Church’s rigidity on abortion has no religious root," the Fifth Columnist began. "Neither the Tanakh (the Jewish bible) nor the Christian Canon (the New Testament) mentions abortion."

With those two sentences, the columnist displayed a major ignorance — two, as a matter of fact. One, he assumed that the stuff Catholics believe in are drawn only from the Bible. Wrong. For Catholics, the Bible alone would not suffice. Because although they believe it is the work of divinely inspired writers and the holiest literature, Catholics also know it is an extraordinarily mix of faith experiences, dogma, laws, history, mythology — even love letters.

They know it is thoroughly naÔve and misleading to take every word in that book as dogmatic, divine instruction. Rather, in each verse, they strive to seek out what theological message God wanted to convey through the scriber’s pen. It is a complicated exercise in exegesis.

For all his sound arguments, the Fifth Columnist was clearly ignorant of the fact that Catholics draw everything they believe in from three pillars – the Bible, tradition that goes back all the way to the apostolic times, and the magisterium, the teaching of its ordained and legitimately instituted ministers.

Second, the columnist says that there is no mention of abortion in the scriptures. Ok. There may be no English word for "abortion" there, but nowhere do the scriptures sanction the destruction of anything vulnerable, let alone the unborn.

When life begins is open to perpetual debate, but even pro-choice advocates know they must find their arguments from somewhere else, not the Bible.

The verdict? Our media poses two threats on religious matters: pedestrian opinion and fallacious logic. Let the experts speak. As for the rest of us, by all means let’s also talk. Debate must never die. But it would be really nice to begin by saying that we are not the experts.