5 THE MOST RELIGIOUS SITCOM
BOX 11.5 THE MOST RELIGIOUS SITCOM
By most estimates, the prime-time show on American TV that takes religion the most seriously is the irreverent animated sitcom The Simpsons . Unlike almost any other TV family, the Simpsons attend church weekly, pray before meals, self-identify as Christians, and generally find spiritual issues important in their lives. To be sure, the sharp-edged show satirizes the foibles of religion, as it does just about everything else but Homer and Marge and the kids return to God in
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prayer and trust time and again. They attend Springfield Community Church (no denomination specified). Neighbor Ned Flanders is a somewhat rigid evangelical Christian, but he is more than the totally hypocritical caricature that most prime-time evangelical Christians are reduced to. If Bart Simpson prays before dinner, “Rub-a-dub-dub. Thanks for the grub,” he is not unlike many of our own children. When Marge tells God she will be a better person and give the poor something they really like, not just old lima beans and pumpkin mix, it strikes a familiar chord.
Why do the producers of The Simpsons believe they can endow their sitcom family with a spiritual dimension while almost no other TV writers do? Is there something about the animated format that makes this less risky? Or is Matt Groening the only writer who has dared to try?
Portrayals of Religious Professionals
Except for explicitly religious programming like the Billy Graham Crusades, The 700 Club, or the Christian Broadcasting Network, religious professionals are greatly underrepresented on U.S. television. When they are shown, they are often, at best, rather saintly but shallow characters, and, at worst, vicious hypocrites hiding behind their clerical collars. In many early Westerns, there was a man of the cloth, often a significant supporting, although seldom a lead, character. Historically, one of the most rounded and developed religious characters of long-running U.S. prime time TV history was Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H. Compared to the cardboard clergy making occasional cameo appearances on other shows, Mulcahy was interesting and complex, yet compared to practically every other character on the later M*A*S*H, he was rather shallow.
A more insidious religious type is the fanatical cult preacher. These characters are very extreme and very evil. Such characters have to be very perverted so as not to evoke any sympathy or any criticisms about the program saying negative things about a real man of God. Such characters became especially popular after such news stories as would-be messiah David Koresh leading the Branch Davidian cult to a fiery death in 1993 in Waco, Texas, or the cult members who committed suicide in 1997 after believing that extraterrestrials would carry them off in the wake of the visit of the spectacular Hale-Bopp comet.
The success of the show Touched by an Angel in the mid-1990s caught the networks’ notice of the public’s interest in spiritual themes, even if in somewhat generalized and romanticized form. The fall lineup of 1997 shows featured several sitcoms and dramas with explicitly religious themes and characters. The most controversial, and most critically acclaimed, was
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Nothing Sacred, about a young Catholic priest struggling with his own humanity. Although created by a Jesuit priest and praised by critics like novelist priest Father Andrew Greeley, Nothing Sacred drew the wrath of the conservative Catholic League for showing a member of the clergy being attracted to a woman friend and counseling a woman considering abortion to follow her conscience (J. Stein, 1997a). Remembering that Reverend Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association campaign against NYPD Blue had scared away enough advertisers to force the network to sell ad time at bargain-basement rates for a top-rated show, the networks took notice (Perkins, 1997). In the end, however, what probably killed Nothing Sacred was its sacrificial time slot opposite the top-rated Friends.
Religion in the News
Although, in general, religious news has traditionally been underreported in the United States, relative to its importance, a look at what is reported reveals some interesting trends.
What Is Covered. Religious news that is centered around an individual person receives relatively heavy coverage, following the star model of political news coverage (see chapter 7). Travels and pronouncements of the Pope, for example, are rather easy and predictable to cover, much more so than comparable Protestant or Jewish happenings that are less focused on a particular person. One exception to this is a flamboyant TV preacher, particularly one with extreme views. Fundamentalist sects, radical mullahs, and especially bizarre cults receive more coverage than mainstream religion, because they are more often focused on a charismatic individual with controversial views.
When religious events are covered by TV news, they tend most often to focus either on Roman Catholicism, whose colorful pageantry and identifiable newsmakers (especially the Pope) make good photogenic copy, or on Protestant fundamentalism, whose dogmatic theology and contentious political activism make good controversy-ridden stories, especially when centered around a charismatic individual. Groups of mainline Protestants politely discussing multiple points of view on social welfare, or Reform Jews examining different degrees of support for Israel may be just as important but less photogenically newsworthy.
The Televangelism Scandals. Some changes in religious news coverage started in 1987 with several key events. Early that year Oral Roberts announced that God had told him He would “call Oral home” if several million dollars were not donated to his Tulsa ministry and hospital before a certain date. The subsequent revelation that popular TV evangelist Jim
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Bakker had had a sexual liaison with a secretary several years before was sharply at odds with the pious image that he and other televangelists sought to portray. This was followed by discoveries of financial mishandling of Bakker’s PTL Ministries funds and of the extravagant lifestyle of Bakker and his wife Tammy. The ensuing public name-calling among evangelists Bakker, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and others had more the character of soap opera family feuds than what people had come to expect from the electronic pulpits. The subsequent tryst of Jimmy Swaggart and a prostitute hardly cleaned up the image. Unlike many earlier religious stories, these were widely reported in the media and widely ridiculed by comedians. The media apparently decided in this case that comedy about religion, even scathing and derisive comedy, was acceptable, even though almost unprecedented in the United States.
The Role of Religion in Secular News Stories. Although religion is sometimes simplistically presented as the basis of what are actually much more complex social problems (e.g., Northern Ireland, Palestine, Lebanon, India), in other cases the importance of religion is missed altogether. A prime example of this is the role of religion in the revolutions that brought down the communist regimes of eastern Europe in 1989 to 1991.
In Poland the Roman Catholic church had been the only legal forum for political discussion for years and, as such, had been the focus of dissent, Neighboring rebellious Lithuania, the only former Soviet republic with a majority Roman Catholic population, was the first to challenge Moscow and demand its independence. In Romania, the revolt against the brutal regime of Nicolae Çeauçescu beganwith a protest after a reformed church service in Timi şoara, a western city near the border of less-censored, already- democratizing Hungary. The protesters were gunned down, but an outraged Romanian nation responded with a force that ended in the televised execution of the hated dictator and his wife on Christmas Day, 1989.
Probably most dramatic, however, was the situation in the old German Democratic Republic (GDR), where 40% of the officially atheistic country were practicing Lutherans, ironically a much larger percentage than in free West Germany. The weekly protests in Leipzig that led to the fall of the GDR government and its hated symbol, the Berlin Wall, in November 1989 had actually begun the previous summer with a weekly Monday night prayer meeting at a Lutheran church. Its numbers grew weekly from a handful of members who quietly picketed after the prayer meeting to a mass protest of thousands filling the streets. The church was given so much credit for the peaceful revolution that the Leipzig city government later hung a huge banner that read WIR DANKEN DIR, KIRCHE (“We thank you, church”).
In the U.S. media, very little was said about the role of religion in these democratic revolutions. Why not? It was probably not a conspiracy of
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silence, but rather simply an oversight by people for whom religion was not very important in their own lives. Perhaps also, they were not used to seeing politics and religion interact in this very different way than they do in the United States. Another possible factor was some uneasiness regarding how to present the role of religion to a society used to having the religious sphere completely separate from the secular sphere, as it is in the United States.
In a somewhat different type of situation, religious dimensions of the news are sometimes ignored or underplayed when they become politically awkward. For example, when the U.S. media were patriotically drumming up support for wars against Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003, much was made of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s admittedly brutal dictatorship, but few stories mentioned that he did allow considerable freedom of religion and that Iraq was one of the few Arab nations with a sizable Christian minority. Moreover, U.S. ally Saudi Arabia rigidly forbade the practice of any religion but Islam, even to the extent of not allowing Christian and Jewish U.S. soldiers stationed there to privately practice their own faith.
Why are the mainstream media so reluctant to cover religious news and religious dimensions of secular news? Hoover (1998) suggests six mistaken beliefs. First is the belief that as societies become more modern and advanced, they necessarily become more secular and less religious; this tenet seems to be widely believed in American intellectual life. Second is the belief that religion is fundamentally a private matter and thus largely outside the realm of public discourse, including journalism. Third, religion makes claims outside the empirical realm of what is knowable and concrete. Journalism is “all about verification and sources, but religion is fundamentally unverifiable” (Hoover, 1998, p. 29). Fourth, religion is thought to be complex and thus hard to cover in a brief media piece. Fifth, religion is controversial and coverage, however careful and objective, is likely to offend someone. Finally, there is the misunderstanding that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbidding the establishment of a state church somehow implies the complete separation of church and state.
There is an interesting minority view in contrast to the view of the media as predominantly secular. Silk (1995) argues that several themes with their origins in religion actually pervade many secular news stories in ways that may not always be apparent. Some of these themes are applause for good works, embracing of tolerance, contempt for hypocrisy, appreciation of faith in things unseen, and concern about religious decline. These themes, while generally positive and socially useful, appear in coverage of news stories and are common themes in the small amount of explicitly religious general entertainment media (e.g., Touched by an Angel).
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Religious Television
In the United States, although in few other places, explicitly religious programming is a multimillion-dollar business (Bruce, 1990; Hoover, 1988; Peck, 1992), produced and distributed totally separately from other television programming. This is consistent with the separation of religion from other aspects of American life. Religious books are sold in separate bookstores from secular books, religious music is typically recorded by different artists and marketed separately from other music, and religious television is produced by religious networks. Although largely a U.S. phenomenon, there is some international growth of TV evangelism, especially in Latin America and most notably in Guatemala, the first majority Protestant country in Latin America.
Although there was some Christian broadcasting in the early days of radio and television, the modern electronic church really began with Billy Graham’s TV specials starting in 1957. These were later followed by Rex Humbard, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, and Jim and Tammy Bakker’s PTL Club. These took a variety of formats and emphases, including Robertson and Bakker’s talk-show format, Falwell’s emphasis on politics, and Roberts’ focus on spiritual healing. All except Schuller were theologically evangelical or fundamentalist, with a heavy emphasis on evangelism (Hoover, 1988). In spite of its evangelistic emphasis, however, Christian TV attracts few non- believers and, in fact, serves mainly to reinforce the existing beliefs of its viewers (Fore, 1987).
The TV evangelism scandals of 1987 to 1988 were watershed events in the history of religious broadcasting. They seemed to confirm what critics of televangelism had been saying for some time, but now were allowed to say much more publicly. Fundraising for all TV ministries, even those untainted by scandal, became more difficult. The media reality of the sullied preacher, long suspected by many skeptics, became the perceived reality for many. Although this negative attention faded over time, some of the lost respect was never regained.
Effects of Television on Religion
It may be that the mere presence of television as a medium has altered all religion in subtle but profound ways, so much so that the perceived reality about religion will never be the same again. In his provocative book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (1985) argued that television has radically reshaped practically everything about our lives. One domain that has been greatly changed is religion, in ways that go far beyond the Sunday broadcasts and the TV evangelists. Postman argued that, because TV is, at
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out as second banana” (p. 117). Although Christianity has always been “a demanding and serious religion,” its TV version can acquire its needed share of the audience “only by offering people something they want” (p. 121), which is hardly historical Biblical Christianity. Furthermore, Postman argues, TV is such a fundamentally secular medium that religious TV uses many of the same symbols and formats (e.g., The 700 Club was modeled after Entertainment Tonight).
Thus, TV preachers are stars who are attractive and affluent just like movie stars. Worship on TV is not participatory; the audience can sit at home and absorb, but cannot have the corporate worship experience of group singing, praying, or liturgy. Although a church may be considered holy ground where people act with reverence, there is no comparable sacred space when watching church on TV at home, where one can sit in dirty underwear drinking beer and eating pizza during the sermon.
Postman (1985) argued that, as more and more religious services are broadcast on TV and as pastors are more acquainted with the television medium, the “danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion” (p. 124). Pastors become concerned about providing the kind of worship conducive to television, even if the service is not being televised. Congregations subtly expect to be entertained, even amused. Worship services have jazz music, rap liturgy, and computerized multimedia presentations. One church ran a full-page ad touting its contemporary Saturday evening service called “Church Lite” for college students who wanted to sleep in on Sunday. Other churches use Sunday school curricula like The Gospel According to the Simpsons or The Gospel According to Harry Potter . A Baptist church in Arkansas hired Wacky World Studios in Tampa for a $279,000 makeover of a former chapel into “Toon Town,” with buzzers and confetti that explode during joyful celebrations like baptisms; the Sunday school attendance doubled (Labi, 2002). Is this a creative reaching out to people in mission or selling one’s soul on the altar of popular culture? The answer is not always obvious.
Places of worship have no particular sacred character, because one can worship through TV while at home. One congregation worships regularly in
a former roller rink, another in an old laundromat, whereas yet another rents space on Sunday mornings in a large university classroom. There is no sense of the sacred, as was found most strikingly in the magnificent cathedrals of Europe. Thus, behavior in the house of worship is no different than it is anywhere else. Has television contributed to this change? For a stimulating set of readings about media, religion, and society, see Hoover and Lundby (1997).
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Some have argued that the big retail chains such as Wal-Mart have an undue but unrecognized control on religious media and popular culture more generally; see Box 11.6.
The media have tremendous potential, much of it as yet untapped, for inducing and encouraging positive social change. Now let us turn to media attempts to intentionally change behavior in socially positive ways through marketing healthy and safe behaviors, drawing on the model of marketing products.