The fundamentalist Christian organisation that led the campaign against the BBC's screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera has appealed to Christians to boycott the Co-operative Bank and Co-op stores after being asked to move its bank account elsewhere.

The organisation, Christian Voice, received a letter from the Co-op Bank earlier this month giving it 30 days to find a new bank because of its homophobic views. The bank prides itself on its 'ethnical policies'.

"It has come to our attention that Christian Voice is engaged in discriminatory pronouncements, based on the grounds of sexual orientation," the letter said. "This public stance is incompatible with the position of the Co-operative Bank, which publicly supports diversity, in all its forms, for our staff, customers and other stakeholders."

But Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, which campaigns for the application of biblical values to public policy, replied: "Of course we make ‘discriminatory pronouncements on grounds of sexual orientation’. We have been criticising homosexual rights ever since we started eleven years ago.

"Standing up for righteousness is what we do."

In a statement released last night, Mr Green called on Christians to stop banking or shopping with the Co-op until the bank ended its "unethical and discriminatory attitude". He said: "Clearly, and on their own admission, the Co-op is not the bank for those who honour the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Christian Voice came to national prominence late last year when it mobilised an unprecedented 55,000 complaints against the BBC's decision to broadcast Jerry Springer, the profanity-strewn West End musical which includes a scene portraying Jesus Christ as a nappy-wearing sexual pervert.

The BBC went ahead with the broadcast in early January despite the complaints, and amid reports that senior executives at the Corporation had been forced into hiding after their personal details were published on the Christian Voice website.

But it appears that the Co-op Bank was more concerned about Christian Voice's long-running campaign against homosexuality in the police force and the rise of the Gay Police Association. One 2003 pamphlet still available on the Christian Voice website, asks: "Homosexual police are involved in some of the most disgusting perversions imaginable; how can they bring clean hands to any police investigation?"

Simon Williams, the bank's director of corporate affairs, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning that the Co-op based its ethical policy largely on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Christian Voice's campaign against homosexuality breached Article 1 of that document under which "human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights".

"They are extreme views, they are not mild views. And once those wrere brought to our attention this simply doesn't fit with our ethical policies," he said.

But Mr Green, interviewed on the same programme, accused the bank of hypocrisy. He said: "We went to them for their fair-trade policies, their opposition to oppressive regimes, and now we find them discriminating against us on the grounds of our religions - which is specificially condemned in the Declaration of Human Rights to which they subscribe."

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