Christian evangelists launched a High Court battle today for the right to bring a private prosecution for blasphemy over Jerry Springer — The Opera.

The show was an "offensive, spiteful, systematic mockery and wilful denigration of Christian belief” — one that that no-one would dream of making about the prophet Mohammed and Islam — two judges were told.

Stephen Green, national director of the evangelical group Christian Voice, is challenging a refusal by District Judge Caroline Tubbs at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in January to issue a summons for the start of a private prosecution against Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, who allowed the controversial show to be screened on BBC2.

Mr Green also wanted to issue a similar summons against the show’s producer, Jonathan Thoday, who staged it at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End and then in a nationwide tour.

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The case is a key test of whether the laws of blasphemy are compatible with free speech

Frances Gibb, Legal Editor of The Times

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Michael Gledhill, QC, appearing for Mr Green, said that such prosecutions for blasphemous libel were extremely rare, occuring perhaps once a generation.

He said it was not being argued that “God cannot be criticised,” he said. Such criticisms were commonplace in a number of plays and productions broadcast on television.

Rather, he said, the complaint arose from the manner in which the criticisms were made.

“The offence is not to stifle debate on the existence of God or any other aspect of the Christian religion but to set a legal limit on the way in which such debate can be conducted.”

Mr Gledhill argued that the district judge had erred in law in refusing to issue the summonses as the show had clearly “crossed the blasphemy threshold”.

He argued: “This is not just about protecting the rights of a section of the Christian population.

“It is about protecting the constitution of the nation which is built on the Christian faith.”

He contrasted public reaction to Jerry Springer — The Opera with that of the Sikh community to the play Behzti (Dishonour) that depicted murder and rape in a Sikh temple.

The Birmingham theatre where Behzti was staged was attacked and the drama was abandoned after the first performance “and it has never seen the light of day since”, the QC said.

He added that no one would need to be reminded of the consequences when a Danish paper published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, causing demonstrations across the world and loss of life.

It went without saying that Mr Thoday would never have dreamed of producing a satire on the prophet Mohammed and the religion of Islam — “nor would any theatre have produced it”, he said.

In contrast “neither Mr Thoday nor Mr Thompson felt the least inhibition in ridiculing God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the sacrament of the eucharist and Christian belief,” Mr Gledhill told Lord Justice Hughes and Mr Justice Collins at the High Court in London.

Through Jerry Springer — The Opera they had treated the Christian faith “with contempt, reviling it by parodying Christian beliefs scurrilously and in the most ludicrous manner”.

The human rights group Liberty is intervening in the case to argue that the blasphemy laws are outdated and that free speech rights “must protect sacred, profane and secular language alike”.

But Mr Gledhill accused District Judge Tubbs of failing properly to assess whether the elements of blasphemous libel had been made out in the case of Jerry Springer — The Opera.

He argued no reasonable person, applying the correct legal test, could find that the elements of blasphemy were not present.

He argued first that the district judge had wrongly decided that under the Theatres Act 1968, she had no jurisdiction to consider the application because it precluded a prosecution for blasphemous libel.

But he dropped the point under questioning from the judges who said the judge had not made such a decision.

Mr Gledhill described how the show toured UK theatres, beginning at the Cambridge Theatre in October 2003 and finishing at Brighton on July 8, 2006.

It was filmed at the Cambridge and broadcast by BBC2 on January 8, 2005. The drama itself was divided into two parts, the first half being a parody of the American chat show hosted by Jerry Springer.

In the second half, Jerry Springer descended into hell to be fought over by the forces of God and Satan and confronted by a section of characters from the first half “who now occupy various Biblical roles but in the most contemptible and scurrilous manner”.

Mr Gledhill described how the warm-up man from the first half became Satan, while a black nappy-fetishist played Jesus and there were scenes featuring a desecration of the service of Holy Communion.

On the night of the broadcast, a crowd gathered outside the BBC at White City, and during the course of the evening an attempt was made to force entry into the building and eggs and tomatoes were thrown at the police.

David Pannick, QC, for Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, said that people’s religious beliefs might be integral to British society but equally so was freedom of expression, “especially in matters of social and moral importance”.

“The Opera won a large number of awards for exceptional artistic achievement, a recognition that this was a powerful satire on a particular type of exploitative television and not, as the claimant fails to appreciate, an attack on Christianity.”

He added that the target of the satire was not religious belief but “the confessional talk-show genre”.

Mr Pannick also refuted the accusation that the BBC would not have broadcast a similar programme about Islam, and added that this was not in any case an issue for the court to determine.

However Mr Thompson, in a submission, had made clear that in determining what to broadcast, the criteria would be the “artistic and other values of the programme” — not, by implication, the religion involved.

He said that the judges should refuse permission for a private prosecution for several reasons: there had been “very considerable delay” by Mr Green in making his application: the programme was broadcast in January 2005; the attempt to bring criminal proceedings was “verging on the vexatious”; and the claimant had sought at a late stage to amend his application.

It could not be argued that the district judge had acted irrationally in ruling that there was no “prima facie case of a ‘contemptuous, reviling, sucrrilous or ludicrous’ attack on Christianity and judges should be slow therefore to find the decision perverse".

The hearing continues.

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