The TV elite 'assume Christians are lunatics He said a lack of basic understanding about religion meant faiths such as Islam were being oversimplified, leading to dangerous levels of ignorance. Mr Bolton said the BBC had a responsibility to improve understanding about religion and not just for educational reasons. "It is also frankly for the safety of society," he said. If you don't understand what is most important to people, as a society we are in trouble. He added: "You do have a whole liberal elite in this country, a liberal secular elite, who dominate television." Mr Bolton said Christian views, such as the Roman Catholic opposition to IVF or gay marriage, were too often dismissed as extreme without any attempt to understand them. "There should at least be an effort to say that just because somebody is against gay marriage or against IVF doesn't necessarily mean they are a lunatic - it is part of their belief, they have a genuine problem here with the legal authority or whatever - understand that position," he said. He said that part of the solution could be to "infuse" religion into other programmes rather than confining it to its own "God slot" and to incorporate religious characters into soap operas. Mr Bolton also said many listeners and viewers had written to the corporation complaining "that Christianity is unfairly treated: that other faiths do not have to put up with what Christianity has to put up with." He added: "What I do think is that Muslims in particular ought to be mature enough in this country to be able to take that humour and that Christians do have a right to say it's about time that the satire which applied to them ought to be applied to others."