TV's take on religion
TV's take on religion
The new NBC miniseries Revelations, which begins Wednesday and is scheduled to run through mid-May, tracks the adventures of an odd couple -- a nun and a religiously skeptical Harvard scientist -- as they try to forestall Armageddon.
To do that, they must confront a series of bizarre events that point to the end of days. There is the shadow of Christ that appears on a mountainside in Mexico; a baby who is either the Antichrist or Christ reborn; a brain-dead girl who seems to channel the spirit of the scientist's dead daughter; and a Satanist who cuts off his finger without bleeding.
NBC promises that if the miniseries succeeds, more of the same will be on our tubes in the fall. The network is banking on this series to boost sagging prime-time ratings in a post-Friends environment.
The Left Behind novels have sold more than 60 million copies since 1995 and have dominated best-seller lists. The series is based on end-of-days prophecy and the Rapture into heaven of believers in Christ, while others are left to cope with apocalyptic fire and brimstone. In movies, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ showed the agony, suffering and, indeed, blood of Jesus. Judgment, punishment, blood and suffering are the motifs.
But these depictions of caffeinated religion grasp at the extreme corners of faith, rather than at the more normative center that is the living experience. Neither the Left Behind series, The Passion or Revelations portray the daily events that drive people of faith -- any religion. Nor did the earlier, sanitized, inoffensive, New Age religious programming that preceded Revelations reflect our reality. In TV's earlier incarnations, a generic and beneficent God provided emissaries of one kind or another to intervene in troublesome or challenging situations:
Where can one see more authentic religious life? For starters, public television's Religion and Ethics. Its shows are serious and substantive. In recent weeks, for example, the stories included a discussion with a physician and bioethicist on complicated end-of-life decisions and a lawsuit brought by a group of inmates in an Ohio prison for more accommodation of their religious rights.
If PBS' show is too heavy, how about the cartoon The Simpsons, now in its 16th season and watched by 14 million viewers? Sure, it is equal opportunity satire. It spoofs many American attitudes and institutions, including religious ones. But as William Romanowski of Calvin College, author of Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture, points out, "Like every other topic The Simpsons touches, the show pokes fun at religion in crossfire fashion. But in creating a kind of animated microcosm of American life, the writers are not dismissive of faith. They treat religion as an accepted part of the fabric of life."
Mark Pinsky, author of The Gospel According to the Simpsons, says, The Simpsons "more accurately reflects the faith lives of Americans than any other show in the medium."
The Simpsons attend church regularly. They pray at home. They overcome through faith the potential moral pitfalls of life, such as adultery. Their overbearing and sometimes obnoxious next-door evangelical neighbor, Ned Flanders, believes, like many Christians, that salvation comes through belief in Christ. Meantime, daughter Lisa Simpson's core religion consists in her commitment to humanistic morality -- the social gospel. Homer wants his children in church regularly not so much for the worship, but for the moral lessons of Sunday school. And everyone sleeps through the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy's sermons, often with their eyes open.
The networks are giving close consideration to more religious themes for the fall season. How about emulating the precision of The Simpsons, rather than the mushy vagueness of Joan of Arcadia, or the obscure otherworldliness of Revelations?