Entertainment

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R-rated 'Game of Thrones' is also grist for debates about a second 'R' -- religion

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Last week, the New York Times magazine produced a fawning piece about George R.R. Martin, fantasy’s “reigning king” because of his seminal “Game of Thrones” series, now at five (immense) books.

I say “fawning” because the story was only on the series’ amazing success and not on the major problems Martin is having at finishing up his series. More on that in a bit. The goal, eventually, is to discuss whether the Times or any other publication has has shown any interest in the role of religion in this global hit.

These books started coming out in 1996, then continued in a (sort of) steady clip until 2011 with the release of book five. Book six, “The Winds of Winter,” was supposed to be out by 2016 at the latest, but the writer got caught up with helping produce the HBO drama (starting in 2011) Game of Thrones.

I read the first two books some years ago, but, annoyed with non-ending violence, I dropped them. I picked them up again in the fall of 2014 and finished the series while teaching in Fairbanks so as to have something to occupy me during that cold, dark winter. Now I’m making my way through the HBO drama and am nearly finished with the fourth season. As the Times says:

After the HBO show premiered, the world Martin had created became a global phenomenon, and his readership reached heights few authors have ever found — his American peers now include other household names of genre fiction, such as Tom Clancy and Stephen King.

The plot of “ASOIAF,” as fans call it, is concerned largely with events unfolding in and around the continent of Westeros around the year 300 A.C. (“after conquest” of the seven kingdoms in the books). The inciting incident of the series is the death, under suspicious circumstances, of Jon Arryn, who had been serving as hand of the king (chief of staff, basically) to a royal named Robert Baratheon. Arryn’s demise sets in motion a chain of events leading to the murder of King Robert himself, which in turn creates a power vacuum, destabilizing the prevailing political order. After centuries of relative calm, chaos erupts into a full-blown war, involving several of the realm’s great family houses.

Millions of people, of course, knew all of that already.

One reason it’s been taking me so long to get through the HBO series is because I can’t watch the stuff while the kiddo is awake because the violence/gore/explicit sex content is off the charts. Maybe that’s why — of the reams of material written about the book and wildly successful series — comparatively little has been written about the role of religion in the Game of Thrones books.

Not to say there isn’t any.


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What are we to think of 'religious' TV shows that sidesteps the whole God issue?

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A late September headline at the Esquire magazine website proclaimed “There Is No God on TV, Only The Good Place.”

Indeed, the clever sitcom of that title, which launched season No. 3 last week, plays around with good and evil, heaven and hell, and even portrays supernatural demons. But God is missing.

This NBC fantasy is just the thing to lure the eyeballs of America’s growing legion of young, religiously unmoored “nones,” in a carefully multicultural fashion that also ignores religious beliefs and practices. Instead, the proceedings are all about a hazy moral philosophy about what makes a good person.

CBS makes a different audience bid with “God Friended Me,” which premiered Sunday. The drama’s lead character Miles (played by Brandon Micheal Hall) is a preacher’s kid turned outspoken atheist. Is the “God” who becomes his Facebook “friend” the actual cosmic God or some human or otherworldly trickster? To find out, Miles enlists his devout bartender sister, a hacker pal, and a journalist, and experiences coincidences that just might be miracles.

Judging from one episode, there may not be much here for religion writers to ponder, and it's hard to guess whether “Friended” can even survive. (Ratings prospects are dimmed by CBS’s inability to set predictable Sunday start times following sports events.) This seems inspiration-drenched programming in the varied tradition of “Highway to Heaven,” “Joan of Arcadia,” “Promised Land,” “Seventh Heaven,” “Touched by an Angel,” or last season’s short-lived “Kevin (Probably) Saves the World.”

“The Good Place,” by contrast, has somehow managed to establish a niche and win critics’ acclaim by probing Big Questions with a droll touch. Here salvation is earned strictly by performing good deeds instead of faith. That conflicts with an historic 1999 Catholic-Lutheran accord that insists Christianity believes that “by grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God” who equips and calls us to “good works.”


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Religion News Service: Movie claims 'red tsunami' will vindicate Donald Trump in November

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In all the sturm und drang of the Kavanaugh-Ford hearings, a Religion News Service story by Steve Rabey (an early GetReligion contributor) on a new Christian film about Donald Trump escaped many peoples’ notice.

Which is unfortunate, in that secular America doesn’t get how vehemently many people believe that God orchestrated President Trump’s 2016 victory. And what’s more, many of those people believe God has mandated another victory for Trump in 2020.

You’ve not heard this? Folks, you’re not reading the right web sites. More below:

(RNS) — Mark Taylor is sure he knows why Donald Trump became president.

Forget Hillary hatred, white anger, Russian interference or voter turnout. Trump’s victory was God’s will, said Taylor. Taylor said he knows this because God told him so.

In 2011, while watching an interview with Trump on TV, Taylor says he heard a voice saying, “The Spirit of God says I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this.”

And the Almighty is just getting started, said Taylor, a former firefighter who has published 23 “prophetic words,” many about Trump’s presidency.

The presidential prediction is detailed in “The Trump Prophecy,” a new film produced with the help of faculty and students at Liberty University — some of whom later rejected its message — that will be shown in some 1,200 theaters on Oct. 2 and 4.

It’s not so much evangelical Protestants who are pushing this idea, but a daughter movement made up of charismatics and Pentecostals (linked up with Liberty University film people). I’ve been amazed over the years how few religion reporters follow these folks, even though this demographic was instrumental in getting Trump elected. Plus, a growing percentage of world Christianity is Pentecostal/charismatic (see this classic major Pew Forum study). Visit Brazil, if you don’t believe me. And much of Africa.

The film is part of a small but influential “Trump prophecy” movement that proclaims the current administration is divinely ordained and condemns its critics as servants of Satan.


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Read it all: The New Yorker offers a stunningly good take on the 'Christian' rock wars

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First, here is yet another tmatt confession: I am so old that I attended one of the original “Jesus music” rock festivals held in Texas in the early 1970s. Then I went to Baylor University during the era when various branches of Word Records in Waco were releasing early albums linked to what would become Contemporary Christian Music.

There’s more. Anyone digging into the roots of “folk” and later “rock” music inside church doors will eventually hit a 1967 landmark — the “Good News” folk musical by Bob Oldenburg. Who played the role of the “skeptic” the first performances? That would be my big brother, Don, who was playing a ukulele before it was cool.

As a journalist, I have been covering the “Christian music” wars since the late 1970s and, of course, that topic ended up in my book “Pop Goes Religion: Faith in Popular Culture.” The key theme: CCM is music defined by unwritten rules about lyrics and the belief that all “Christian art” should, in reality, be evangelism in disguise.

Hold that thought. I wrote all of that to add punch to my praise for an almost unbelievably good New Yorker feature by Kelefa Sanneh that just ran with this epic headline:

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.

It opens with a quotation that left me stunned. I have read shelves full of books about “Christian rock” and have never been clubbed over the head with these words.

Try to guess the minister who had this to say in 1957, addressing whether gospel music could be wedded to rock ‘n’ roll. This Baptist pastor from the South was blunt:

Rock and gospel were “totally incompatible,” he explained: “The profound sacred and spiritual meaning of the great music of the church must never be mixed with the transitory quality of rock and roll music.” And he made it clear which he preferred. “The former serves to lift men’s souls to higher levels of reality, and therefore to God,” he wrote. “The latter so often plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths.”

Who said that? That would be the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take it away, Aretha Franklin.

It’s hard not to quote every other passage in this must-read piece, which punches all the right buttons — from the copycat “Jesus is my boyfriend” style of worship music to battles over loud drums and heavy-metal guitars. Yes, U2 is in here. Ditto for Bob Dylan.


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What does it mean when a member of Pussy Riot shows up at a Christian arts festival?

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You’ve all heard of Pussy Riot, the defiant all-female Russian punk band that got headlines back in 2012 when several of them interrupted a prayer service -- invading the altar area -- at the Christ Our Savior Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow with anti-Vladimir Putin chants. (Tmatt covered that here). 

Since then, these anarchist/feminists have been known for disrupting everything from a World Cup game to the Moscow subway. But they haven’t been particularly known for any religious sentiments, other than a song addressed to the Virgin Mary called “Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.”

So I was amazed to read a Religion News Service story about one of its members appearing at Greenbelt, a famous Christian music festival held in the U.K.

From its shock-effect name to its defiant activist tactics, little about the Russian band Pussy Riot would suggest that the punk group is on a holy mission.

But after an appearance last weekend (Aug. 26) at Greenbelt, the U.K.’s foremost Christian arts festival, Pussy Riot’s co-founder Maria Alyokhina explained that the act, beginning with the 2012 protest that resulted in two years in a labor camp, should be understood as a “Christian gesture.”

Pussy Riot is better known in the West for its feminism and political resistance -- which almost prevented Alyokhina from making her date at Greenbelt. The Russian authorities had barred her from boarding a plane earlier this month as she headed on a tour of British arts events, telling her she was forbidden to leave the country until she completed a 100-day community service sentence for taking part in an unauthorized protest in April.

But Alyokhina, 30, is not easily deterred. She drove instead, crossing at an unsecured section of the border, and kept going until she reached Lithuania, where she boarded a plane to Britain.

What the festival-goers in England got was Alyokhina and other members of her band putting on a show, called “Riot Days.”


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Friday Five: Mr. Rogers block party, 'Uncle Ted' saga, Muslim Republican, sinful church sign and more

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I spent much of the week in the Smoky Mountains area of East Tennessee — the land of Dollywood and Terry Mattingly — covering a national church event for The Christian Chronicle.

As a result, I was away from my keyboard and the pitter-patter of religion headlines much more than usual the past few days.

What did I miss? By all means, ping me and let me know.

But first, let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: I don't know about you, but amid the constant barrage of news involving divisive politics and church sex scandals, I need to read a happy story every now and then.

Enter Tennessean religion writer Holly Meyer with a delightful piece on a Nashville church embracing Fred Rogers' message of love and kindness and planning a neighborhood block party.

Read every word.

2. Most popular GetReligion post: Until further notice, let's just plan on our No. 1 most-clicked post of the week being another insightful analysis by my colleague Julia Duin on media coverage — or lack thereof — of the scandal involving disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.


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Washington Post spots big religion ghost in the Byrds' 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' revival

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You know those "desert island" games people like to play with music, books, movies and other forms of culture? You start with a question like this: If you were stranded on a dessert island, what 10 albums/CDs would you have choose to have with you (with no box sets allowed)? Let the life-defining debates begin.

The Washington Post ran a long, wonderful feature the other day that punched one of those buttons for me. The headline: "It was the Byrds album everyone hated in 1968. Now, ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ is a classic."

If I had to name a "favorite American rock band," I would almost certainly pick the Byrds.

If all Roger McGuinn and company gave American history (forget music) was radio hits that helped introduce that Bob Dylan guy, that would be a lot of cultural clout. But the Byrds, with a major assist from Buffalo Springfield, gave us so, so, so much more. Think Crosby, Stills & Nash, think Poco, think Flying Burrito Brothers, think Eagles, think Tom Petty, think R.E.M. and on and on. Just look at this family-tree chart on that.

This Post story gets that, but it also spotlights the fact that several crucial issues linked to the "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album that were, yes,  essentially religious. This was when the Byrds tried to wade deep into the water of country music and, thus, ran head-on into Bible Belt culture.

Did the Post spot this "religion ghost"? Yes! This feature does a fantastic job handling a major religion ghost, woven into the life of McQuinn, but missed two other ghosts. Hold that thought. Here is the overture:

In June, with so little fanfare they weren’t even listed on the bill, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman took the stage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to play a song from “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.”

They last did that on March 16, 1968, and it did not go well. They were the Byrds then, and the appearance at the Grand Ole Opry elicited boos, catcalls or indifference, depending on who’s telling the story.


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Bee advised: Amid religious and political tumult, readers may welcome a good chuckle

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Behold this recent "news" item:

DALLAS, TX -- Pastor Robert Jeffress, longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, has publicly accused Jesus of Nazareth of having "Trump Derangement Syndrome" after reading that the Christ condemned adultery in the Sermon on the Mount.

A baffled Jeffress read Jesus's words condemning not only adultery but looking at a woman lustfully and immediately concluded the Rabbi was simply exhibiting symptoms of deranged, unfair hatred of Donald Trump. ...

Here's another one:

WASHINGTON -- In an alarming show of religious extremism and complete disregard for the separation of church and state, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was spotted by news reporters serving food to the homeless.

Kavanaugh performed the frightening display of religious devotion alongside an organized group of radicalized Catholics, whose extremist mission appears to be helping the needy. Local news crews leaped out of the bushes and caught him in the act, asking him, "What do you have to say for yourself, BIGOT?" 

As you surely perceived, this is not real fake news but fake real news, that is to say fictional satire, posted by The Babylon Bee. 

Hey, in times of political and religious tumult, everyone can use a good chuckle. 

The online Bee, which first hit an unready readership two years ago, is religion’s equivalent of the devoutly secular The Onion, whose recent gibes include an item headlined “Sessions Vows To Protect All Deeply Held Religious Bigotry.”


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Is Israeli TV drama Fauda a harbinger of the news industry's coming iteration?

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Is Israeli TV drama Fauda a harbinger of the news industry's coming iteration?

The cable television and online streaming explosion has produced a golden age of visual, fictionalized, but ripped-from-the-headlines story telling. Some religious and political conservatives may disdain the liberal-leaning views that many of the shows unabashedly embrace, but for those who create the programming it's an unprecedented era of opportunities.

It's also an era of unprecedented, and often confusing, crossover between news and entertainment. From shows dramatizing or spoofing Washington politics, to those cherry-picking storylines from current international intrigues, it’s often hard to tell the two apart, where fact takes leave and artful fiction enters.

As traditional news platforms continue to implode -- and loose their ability to devote adequate resources to in-depth, reporting-based investigative journalism -- it’s a trend that, for the foreseeable future, is likely to continue, for better or worse, but more likely the worse for informed civic debate.

Personally, I find great artistic merit in many of these shows. I also appreciate their willingness to highlight some of the social ills that plague our -- and virtually every other -- nation. That and because I relish a well-written and well-acted product. It helps to remember that I'm an ex-Los Angeles reporter who spent time on the Hollywood TV and film beats, and who also briefly worked in the feature film industry.

Still, I limit my watching because, well, because the shows are binge-watching addictive and I don't want to spend too much time watching TV, no matter how good and entertaining it may be. I’m old-fashioned. I’d rather waste time reading non-fiction, which my reactive mind argues is somehow healthier for me. But that may just be my generational snob appeal.

In a sense, all the fictional dramas I’m drawn to are some writer’s fantasy, but I tend to be drawn to the show's based on the possible, meaning that while I have little interest in a “Game of Thrones,” a series such as “Big Love,” the departed HBO show about polygamy-practicing, fringe Mormons, quickly sucked me in because of my interest in religious groups and the show’s artistic mastery (and a fantastic cast).

Likewise, my deep interest in Israel’s fate and that of the Middle East in general, has drawn me to the Netflix (in the U.S., anyway) show “Fauda,” which I have allowed myself to devour in binge-size bites.



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