I saw that on the Daily Show last night. It ranks right up there with the South Park episode this week as the funniest damn thing I’ve seen all week. Especially Jon’s take on it.
Based on what, precisely?
The idea of angels wandering around and helping people is a popular Christian one - most of the angel believers in the US would be offended if you said they weren’t Christians. I don’t see how you can expect theological accuracy in these shows anymore than you could scientific accuracy.
As far as Christian/non-Christian - all of the shows exist to sell advertising. Turning off non-Christians is a no-no, which is why no Jesus. You’d think they’d be happy enough with God. (Turning off atheists is fine, of course.)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Seventh Heaven, with a wonderful minister as the hero. Let’s see a show with a leader of American Atheists treated so kindly.
All this claptrap in our increasingly theocratic culture about how Christians are being persecuted reminds me how Joe Stalin saw threats to the revolution every five minutes while he was firmly in power in the Kremlin. Imminent threats are great for energizing the masses of sheep.
Yet, just as often, it presents a message that it’s good to believe in something despite the faults of organized religion (“Red Hot Catholic Love”) or that you shouldn’t hate someone just because you think their religion is bogus (“All About Mormons”). South Park has never seemed like an anti-religious show to me.
And if those examples in the OP are the worst the PTC can come up with, they really need to get a life. Comedy is all about mixing together the divine and the profane for an unexpected effect. Show me a drama that consistently mocks religion in a serious way. There really isn’t one.
one needn’t even bother reading the conclusions of this study when they saw who was conducting it and what their criteria for “negative” were:
clearly, this group needs to get a life.
I suspect the folks who believe this “us po’ persecuted Christians” nonsense, every TV character who isn’t openly and constantly singing the praises of Jesus is an atheist (even the openly Jewish ones 
).
As I’ve said before, these folks think anything short of a theocracy is “persecution.”
I don’t see it. I watch “Joan of Arcadia” every week; God shows up, and he gives messages of love and caring, but those are hardly particularly Christian. He never mentions Jesus, or any other Biblical figures - not even to use Biblical stories as parables for Joan’s life. I agree that it’s warm and fuzzy, and the implication is that there’s only one god, but it’s a pop-culture, non-denominational god. I don’t deny that the depiction draws certain ideas from Christian teachings, but only to the point that they have permeated our culture in general. There is nothing specifically relating to Jesus, to judgment, to sin; no answers regarding Heaven or Hell; nothing that says “Christian” as opposed to just a generalized concept of God. No religion gets to claim exclusive domain over “God” or “treating people nicely.”
Granted I don’t watch the show much, but it’s not called Moshe ben Knoxville*–it’s named after a Catholic heroine. Seems like a pretty unsubtle nod in the Christian direction to me.
Daniel
- My best attempt at a Judification of the name after ten minutes’ googling
I have to agree with astorian, and just typing that out is giving me heartburn. Most TV shows go out of their way not to adress religion at all. Those that do tend to be very non-denominational, even when it makes no sense at all in the context of the show. I used to watch what was probably the most explicitly Christian show on television - Seventh Heaven - because it was the lead-in to Angel, a show about a repentent vampire who goes around cutting the heads off demons. (Incidentally, who the fuck writes up these schedules?) The period I was watching happened to coincide with a story arc about the minister’s son falling love with a Jewish girl and converting to Judaism. Which upset the minister. But in all the fights and arguments and shouting and pouting, not once did anyone ask the kid, “Does this mean you no longer believe that Jesus was the son of God?” Which, you know, seems to be the most obvious question to ask in that sort of situation. The entire story arc (indeed, the entire show, from what I saw of it before they shifted the schedule around again) was resolved without ever once mentioning Jesus, even though 95% of the cast was explicitly Christian. From what I’ve seen of Touched by an Angel and Joan of Arcadia, those shows strive even harder to be free of any definable theology, prefering instead a nebulous “God is really neat and looks out for everyone no matter what,” message. Which, for that matter, describes pretty much every TV show I’ve ever seen that broached the subject of religion in any way. I’ve never in all my life seen a TV show that, even for a single episode, was actively hostile to the idea of religious belief.
The only exception is South Park, which has specifically stated that if you aren’t Mormon, you burn in Hell. And I’m pretty sure that was satire.
Of course, to people like the PTC, any show that doesn’t explicitly promote their own particular Christian faith is “anti-religious,” so the article linked to in the OP surprises me not one whit.
What about, like, Joan of Arcadia or whatever that drek is?
I just remembered which Simpsons episode I heard Bozell complaining about – it was the one where Homer “takes” a baptism for Bart (in the manner of throwing himself in front of a bullet). Bozell interpreted that a mocking Christianity and holding it up as a harm to be protected from. I noticed, however, that after Homer took the baptism, he became more intelligent, articulate, and over-all-good (for a moment anyway).
While I can’t recall too many instances of Jesus being mentioned, specifically, most often when a religious authority (through weddings, funerals, rituals in religious buildings, etc…) is represented, he is shown to be a Christian leader. “Non-denominational” in television generally shows up in a Christian sense. Occasionally, of course, one sees a rabbi, but that’s fairly rare.
That’s not true, actually; I caught the same episode ('cause his love interest–soon to be his wife–was hot), and one his father’s arguments was that he had raised the son to believe in Jesus. I’m trying to find a script to verify that, but I’m not having much luck. (It’s easier to find Angel scripts.)
Let’s put the Parents Television Council, as quoted as the source of the OPs story, into perspective:
Source: http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000731656
whistles
Wow, it isn’t a good decade to for anyone named “Powell” to be making presentations…
OK, this is true, but it’s reasonably based upon a reality: if you are going to portray a religious or spiritual event within a society (USA) that is at least nominally 80%+ “Christian” in some way, shape or form, you’re gonna portray some brand of Christianity. Even if rendered unrecognizably Generic-American-Protestant-Processed-Church-Product.
In the cases of Touched by an Angel and Joan of Arcadia the writers dance around theological specifics in order to maximize the potential viewers who may identify the god-character in the show as possibly being based on “theirs”. But their vision of what God and Angels do ends up owing more to the New Age than to traditional Christian or Judaic mysticism.
These shows tend to imply that though their characters are moving among a culturally Christian society (with an ocassional Jew, Muslim or “miscellaneous” thrown in), God is “above it all”, and not really tied in with human religious quibbles. Yes, JoA uses a x-reference to St. Joan of Arc, but that’s more because that’s a reference to a person who had divine visions that a majority of the culture can understand.
Be that as it may, the complainers are just talking out of their fundaments – hostile, schmostile; these whiners just want our primetime entertainment to actually preach at us.
To be fair, every generations’ view of “God and Angels” is “New Age” rather than “traditional”…
Did he? Well, I can’t say as I was watching with rapt attention. I very well might have missed it.
On the show, Grace’s father is a rabbi, and portrayed postively.
Name a Christian figure (priest, minister, whatever) that has been referenced on the show as often as Grace’s father.
You might not have; when I looked at tvtome.com, I saw that there were three episodes in a row dealing with that whole ordeal. We might have seen different ones.
No argument there; even when it’s the very reconizable Catholic priest being shown, they normally don’t go into religious specifics. Regardless, the generic representation is still an obvious Christian one. Neurotik wasn’t wrong in that assertion.
What, Will and Grace? I don’t really watch it, so I can’t say; however, while Neurotik referenced two shows (Joan of Arcadia and Touched By An Angel), I think his overriding point was what I’m asserting: that the religious representations shown on television are overwhelmingly pro-Christian.