There seems to be some recent beliefs that despite his being a Sunday School teacher and insisting that the Biblical birth of Christ narrative be recited by Linus in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” it appears that in later years that Charles M. Schulz became disillusioned and abandoned religion altogether. If this is true, then what caused him to do this, and was he an atheist by the end of his life?
How does it appear that Charles M. Schulz became disillusioned and abandoned religion altogether?
Judging by his later strips, Charles Schulz didn’t think about much more than tennis and golf by that time.
Schulz was as enthusiastic about dour mid-western Protestantism as anybody I’m aware of.
According to his Wiki article:
He had a horrible first marriage, an adulterous affair, a traumatic divorce, a stroke, and was finally diagnosed as having colon cancer. If shit like that happened to me, I’d probably change my world outlook too.*
*Mind you, being filthy rich would make all of the above a LOT easier to handle… :rolleyes:
I don’t think he was an atheist - up until the end, Charlie Brown would lie in bed thinking about God.
What did happen was that Schulz was almost evangelical in the late 1940’s, until he realized he didn’t know any more than anybody else and had no business telling other people what was right and wrong.
He was personally religious, but just quiet about it, and thought being kind and compassionate were much more important than anybody’s conception of God.
A production of EQUUS starring Peanuts characters could be interesting. Snoopy and Woodstock in horse masks would not be that hard to imagine.
As opposed to atheists who believe in forcing people what to do.
There was a book called 'The Gospel According to Peanuts" in the 1960s.
Which wasn’t written by Schultz.
There are also:
Do these say anything about the religious beliefs about the creators? Or do they say everything about the religious beliefs of the people who want to buy them?
…but The Gospel According to Peanuts was the first one of those, and all the others are riffing on that title.
The Gospel According to Peanuts really did talk about scripture a lot, as did *Peanuts *itself. I haven’t read the others, but I’m going to take a wild guess that *TGATP *was a lot more serious in its intent than the others.
Other than that, I can’t figure out what** Jim’s Son** point is. The statement about atheists has to be ironic, right?
The definite biography is David Michaelis’ Schulz and Peanuts. There are many comments about Scultz’s religious beliefs, but the important section for this thread starts on p350.
There is no smoking gun, no declaration of atheism. However, “Between 1965 and 1975, Schulz underwent a transformation.” He moved away from his earlier evangelistic beliefs in the Church of God, and said he was anti-evangelism. By that he meant that he thought everyone was destined for salvation. But he also was quoted as “I am fearful of an overly organized church and I am *very *fearful of a church which equates itself with Americanism.” Prayer and the Bible passages he had once underlined had also lost meaning for him. No one incident is cited as the cause of any of this. It’s the evolution of his beliefs, his observations of the world, and maybe his personal life since his then wife was not religious.
After 1975, there is no evidence that religion had any deep meaning for him, and the way that organized religion was being expressed in America was antithetical to his beliefs. Whether he ever lost his generalized belief in a Creator isn’t clear from the book. It seems absolutely clear that as a businessman he soft-pedaled any deviation he had from standard pieties so as not to make any waves with his huge audience.
The Wiki quote that Qadrop cites is from Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s Good Grief: the Story of Charles M. Schulz. The religious discussion there is quite short and superficial, as is the whole book. There are no footnotes, no way to tell where the quote comes from. At best, you get the second-hand observations of Robert Short, the author of The Gospel According to Peanuts, who says that he thought Schulz was heading to a churchless Christianity, in the style of Tolstoy, which is consistent with what Michaelis implies but Johnson leaves it open whether Schulz was even still a Christian in any sense.
Schulz’s religious beliefs at the end of his life aren’t well known. As Qadgop notes, he described himself as a secular humanist, which people of the day understood to mean someone who did not consider god the primary source of moral authority, whether he existed or not. The term was demonized by the religious to mean atheists (not that being called an atheist is an insult, but religious audiences thought it was), but a secular humanist could believe in god.
Edit: Exapno ninja’d me with a much more authoritative treatment of the issue.
–Cliffy
Agreed.
I strongly disagree. You yourself said he thought everyone was destined for salvation. If Michaelis had at all suspected that Schulz was agnostic or atheist, he would have said so explicitly.
It’s true that his most overtly religious work - the Christmas special, Linus’ deluded belief in the Great Pumpkin, and Linus’ philosophizing about scripture, occurred before 1975, but there were references to the bible throughout Peanuts’ run.
I said specifically that Michaelis’ discussion was about Schulz’s beliefs as of the mid-1970s. I can’t state for certain whether they changed or evolved over the last 25 years of life or whether Michaelis would have made that an issue. He simply drops the subject. You’d have to ask him why.
Yes, but that supports my contention that he was conscious of his audience. They wanted the religious aspects. I would argue that the reduction of religious is far more significant than whatever minimal presence he continued to give it.
And just because Schulz’ religious beliefs changed doesn’t mean Linus’ had too. Comic strip characters generally don’t evolve philosophically even if their creators do.
Schulz hated the superficial religiosity in Dennis the Menace and Family Circle:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/12.30.99/schulz2-9952.html
This is, BTW, the same article cited on Wikipedia for his secular humanism claim.
The rest of that paragraph which you failed to quote rather dramatically augurs in the other direction – that he was agnostic, at least. “Kingdom of God” doesn’t mean anything. I use phrases like that all the time, and I’ve been an atheist since I could walk. Our traditions of talking about the universe are grounded in religious tradition, so therefore our language is as well. But it doesn’t mean we believe. Many of us don’t.
–Cliffy