Imagine that you woke up this morning and realised that you were God. Yes, the creator of the universe, all-powerful and all-knowing, no less. The question is this: would you want Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, to be your spin doctor?

Mr Green is seeking to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy over its screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera. He wants to put the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson, in the dock along with the show's producer, Jonathan Thoday, who staged a nationwide tour. When District Judge Caroline Tubbs refused permission for the prosecution, Mr Green appealed to the High Court, arguing that the show was "an offensive, spiteful, systematic mockery and wilful denigration of Christian belief".

Last week, two High Court judges ruled that the legislation prevents any prosecution for blasphemy in relation to public performance of plays and broadcasts. Mr Green has now announced that he will appeal to the House of Lords.

When the BBC first announced its intention to screen the show, Christian Voice published telephone numbers of BBC executives on the internet, sparking abusive calls and threats of violence. The protesters claimed that the musical featured more than 8000 swear words. (It transpired that they arrived at this figure by multiplying the number of offensive words by the number of people singing them in the show, including the 27-strong chorus. There is something weird about going to the theatre, electronic adding machine in hand, to count the sweary words.) What is not in dispute is that Jerry Springer - The Opera is a gleefully offensive send-up of the record-breaking American TV chat show, in which Springer hosts confessions and slanging-matches among freak guests. In the musical, Springer gets to interrogate Satan, Christ, Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary and God about who is really to blame for the mess of the world. In the resulting row, God looks for a shoulder to cry on and wryly sings, It Ain't Easy to Be Me. Springer absolves himself of the chaos he creates, repeating his mantra: "I don't solve problems, I just televise them."

In other words, the musical takes the amoral values of the Jerry Springer Show to their logical conclusion and satirises them.

Satire and irony don't figure strongly in the Christian Voice tool box. Mr Green portrays those who disagree with his views as "enemies of God", and also fulminates against the European Union, the legality of homosexuality and the abolition of the death penalty. He is on record as advocating the withdrawal of public funding from groups supporting people with HIV and Aids. Just as well he's a Christian, then.

I'm really fed up with religious people who have made taking offence into a cottage industry. Hardly a day goes by without some image of Muslim protesters ranting about offence and blasphemy, or a Christian group trying to get a play or film stopped. Sikh protesters managed to stop the play Behzti in Birmingham after violent protests and threats against its Sikh writer. The Catholic League in America has called for a national boycott of the new film The Golden Compass because of its alleged atheist message. Many evangelical Protestants who burned their television licences in public argued that the BBC wouldn't dare satirise the prophet Muhammad. If so, more's the pity. Muslim bullies are no better than Christian bullies, and they need to be stood up to. Save us from zealots who want to do censoring or hand-chopping homers on God's behalf.

If the deity needs to be defended by the likes of Stephen Green or Sheik Riyadh ul Haq, he may not be dead but he must be on a life-support machine. If the Creator is deeply offended by second-rate poetry or television soap operas, we're in more trouble than we realise. It is now argued that the archaic blasphemy laws should be extended to cover all religions. This is madness. There is a very good theological case for arguing that gods, bishops, imams and moderators should be no more exempt from satire than prime ministers and fashion gurus.

What is behind much of the current "offence" industry is the realisation that the churches have lost the privileged position they have held for far too long. Religious adherents need to make their case in today's market-place of ideas by the integrity of their thinking and the attractiveness of their exemplars and not by blasphemy laws, historic privileges, threats, serial taking of offence and fatwas.

Learn to use the TV's off button, brothers and sisters. And you don't have to walk into the theatre, with or without an adding machine.

If you did wake up this morning believing yourself to be God, please don't leave the house. There are enough crazed people out there already. Christian Voice? Not in my name.