An onscreen Bible reading which demanded women be submissive to their husbands has sparked calls to end religious broadcasting on public television in Belgium.

The New Testament reading, from Ephesians 5.22 – 33,  was broadcast on radio and Flemish TV station VRT from a Catholic mass in the town of Grimbergen.

A lay reader said, “Women, be submissive to your husband as the husband to the Lord. For the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the church.”

Sven Gatz, the media minister for the Dutch-speaking Belgian region of Flanders who represents the Flemish liberal party, tweeted: “No outdated, woman-unfriendly statements … please. What if, for example, an imam would have said this?”

He told newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: “The fact that they come from an old book is not an argument for letting them go to our people. This is not of this time, and that it is broadcast on the VRT for the whole of Flanders is already completely crazy.”

Mr Gatz has been unsuccessfully calling for the end of Songs of Praise-style programmes at the taxpayer’s expense since last year, but he now hopes the controversy will reignite the debate and insists different solutions could be found for religious people who are unable to attend mass.

“I want to examine all the technical possibilities to give these people their weekly celebration. But this cannot be an argument to keep these broadcasts, at the expense of the taxpayer," he said.

VRT said it had “no problem” with its broadcasts leading to debate and discussion, while the Dutch Bible Society, which has Flemish members, said that the reading had been taken out of context.

“The contested statement is preceded by a very different sentence: ‘Accept each other’s authority out of respect for Christ’. This indicates that this is a very different matter than legitimisation of the oppression of women by men,” a spokesman for the society said.