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Plug-In: A 50-year TV flashback -- Why 'The Waltons' wasn't afraid of religious faith

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Plug-In: A 50-year TV flashback -- Why 'The Waltons' wasn't afraid of religious faith

During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered “The Waltons” and watched all 221 episodes.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that the classic TV show about a Depression-era family in rural Virginia made its prime-time debut on Sept. 14, 1972.

That’s 50 years ago.

I started emailing myself notes about religion references in specific episodes — those with titles such as “The Sinner”, “The Sermon” and “The Baptism” — and marked the anniversary date on my calendar. Journalists are always looking for a story, don't you know?

I pitched a piece to The Associated Press. To my delight, Global Religion news director David Crary and news editor Holly Meyer let me write it. This isn’t hard news, but I hope it’s interesting.

Speaking of AP friends, Matt Curry and I worked together in the Dallas bureau from 2003 to 2005. Curry later left journalism and attended Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. He's a big fan of “The Waltons,” and his family’s experience became the lede for my feature:

The Rev. Matt Curry’s parents were children of the Great Depression, just like “The Waltons” — the beloved TV family whose prime-time series premiered 50 years ago.

When Curry was growing up on a farm in northern Texas, his carpenter father and teacher mother often argued playfully over who had a poorer childhood.

“The Depression was the seminal time of their lives — the time that was about family and survival and making it through,” said Curry, now a 59-year-old Presbyterian pastor in Owensboro, Kentucky. “My dad used to talk about how his dad would go work out of town and send $5 a week to feed and clothe the family.”

So when “The Waltons,” set in 1932 and running through World War II, debuted on CBS on Sept. 14, 1972, the Currys identified closely with the storylines.

I enjoyed interviewing two stars of “The Waltons”: Richard Thomas (John-Boy Walton) and Kami Cotler (Elizabeth Walton).

The story explores how the series delved into spiritual themes at a time when the TV networks tended to avoid them.


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In praise of the humble news Q&A: God, Lt. Dan and spiritual motivations for public service

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In praise of the humble news Q&A: God, Lt. Dan and spiritual motivations for public service

It would be hard to name a form of journalism more “humble” than a simple Q&A piece about a celebrity or someone else who has found his or her way into the news.

The journalist produces a short introduction and then, theoretically, gets out of the way.

Yes, the news organization still controls the narrative — as in asking the questions and then publishing edited versions of the questions and the answers. In practice, readers encounter this bit of journalism-speak: “This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.” (I often advise newsmakers to record these interviews for themselves, allowing them — if necessary — to post transcripts of what went down.)

This brings me to a recent Knoxville News Sentinel feature about actor Gary Sinise, whose work with injured veterans and first responders was bringing him back to Knoxville for the 2022 Medal of Honor Celebration. His public-service work on these issues is rather logical because of his famous role as Lieutenant Dan Taylor, an angry wounded warrior who finds his way back to wholeness in the movie “Forest Gump.”

Here at GetReligion, we often ask why so many journalists, when writing about public figures of this kind, tend to leave facts about religion out of the mix. This is especially problematic when the person being profiled has, on numerous occasions, made it clear that faith is one of the defining elements of his or her life. To cut to the chase: It’s harder to do that kind of crude editing when offering what is supposed to be a verbatim transcript of an interview.

There were zero “religious” questions about in this interview, even though Sinise has for years talked openly about his faith. But the humble Q&A format allowed the actor to talk about his life on his own terms. Here is an example of that in a discussion that is at the heart of the feature:

Knox News: You've played Lt. Dan, but also directed a production of "Tracers," a story about wounded Vietnam vets, in the '80s. You've been very involved with veterans in your show career, how has that influenced your work as a philanthropist?


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Shia LeBeouf converts to Catholicism: News coverage -- good and bad -- focuses on redemption

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Shia LeBeouf converts to Catholicism: News coverage -- good and bad -- focuses on redemption

Celebrity news coverage and religion couldn’t be more polar opposites most of the time. Coverage of actors, models and others in the entertainment industry often resembles a list for the seven deadly sins.

Every so often, the world of celebrity and faith intersect. When they do, the mainstream press doesn’t know what to do with it, creating tone-deaf coverage similar to sports stories containing what GetReligion has long called religion “ghosts.”

Meanwhile, the religious press — I’m referring to Catholic media in this case — love to jump on this kind of story. This has certainly been the case with actor Shia LaBeouf this summer and public statements regarding his conversion to Catholicism.

It’s a textbook case of the mainstream press largely ignoring such an announcement, while the Catholic press can’t get enough of it. When the mainstream press did cover LaBeouf’s interview, it was in the context of his troubled personal life. For some journalists in the Catholic press, he became a poster child for upholding tradition and the Latin Mass against the more progressive forces in the church.

Depending on who and what you read, LeBeouf’s conversion story is either a farce, something to be celebrated or something to be feared.

LaBeouf, like many in his profession, does interviews primarily to promote specific movies and their careers overall. While promoting his new film “Padre Pio,” which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, LaBeouf announced that he had converted to Catholicism. The movie is based on the life of Padre Pio, an Italian Franciscan Capuchin friar famous for exhibiting stigmata most of his life. He was canonized as a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

The former “Transformers” star made it known that he was now a practicing Catholic during an Aug. 25 appearance on Bishop Robert Barron’s show “Conversations at the Crossroads.” The YouTube link alone has generated over 1.3 million views.

Here is where the celebrity news coverage got interesting.


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Bonus podcast: Return of hot debates about ancient Psalms vs. contemporary praise hits

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Bonus podcast: Return of hot debates about ancient Psalms vs. contemporary praise hits

Here is a truth that many religion-beat professionals (a) haven’t really thought through or (b) they totally get it, but their editors do not.

Obviously, churches from coast to coast and around the world are engaged in heated debates, if not outright financial wars, about centuries of church teachings about marriage and sexuality. This makes headlines. These battles often reach the local level (ask United Methodists and, previously, Episcopalians).

Editors like that, since these battles can be framed as “politics.”

But there is another subject that frequently causes divisions in the pews (or megachurch folding chairs) — music. These battles rarely make headlines, even though they stir deep emotions between various generations of believers. In recent decades, this has led to discussions of “worship wars.”

I recently wrote a column — “Open Bible to Psalms: What messages are seen there, but not in modern praise music?” — that was, shall we say, “worship wars” adjacent. This led to me being invited as a guest on the national “Connections” podcast, with hosts Mike Thom and Colleen Houde. If you want to listen to that, CLICK HERE.

During that discussion I mentioned that I had another column coming up that was related to this subject. It later appeared with this headline: “Hillbilly Thomists — Dominicans tracing their roots into Appalachian music and faith.”

But the Psalms column was the hook for the podcast and it didn’t take long to veer into “worship wars” territory and the subject of commercialized music in the modern church. That made me flash back a decade-plus to a column with this headline: “FM radio reality in church.”

Maybe the best way to intro this bonus podcast is simply to reprint that column. So here goes.

The clock is ticking and soon Jeff Crandall while face the challenge of selecting the right music for the Christmas services at High Desert Church.

This will be tricky, because Christmas is what the 70-member staff at this megachurch calls a "federal" event.


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Hillbilly Thomists: Dominican brothers singing about the Americana ties that bind

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Hillbilly Thomists: Dominican brothers singing about the Americana ties that bind

With its sobering lyrics and a droning country-blues riff, "Holy Ghost Power" by the Hillbilly Thomists is a song with zero chance for Christian radio success.

The jilted protagonist has been "living off of grits, whiskey and Moon Pies." His man cave offers no refuge: "A hundred channels of nothing on the TV at 10. It's like Diet Coke and original sin. … Now it's a zombie town, there's a lot of undead. They wander around looking underfed."

But the chorus offers hope: "He makes a rich man poor; He makes a weak man strong. No more going wrong just to get along. I felt the force of the truth when they pierced His side. I saw the war eagle dive and I could not hide."

It wouldn't shock old-school country fans if this was a Johnny Cash song. But it was written by a banjo-playing Dominican from Georgia who has an Oxford theology doctorate and now leads the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Writing to the National Reso-Phonic Company, Father Thomas Joseph White said he likes to play this classic blues guitar "in my office looking out at the Roman Forum that's 2,700 years-old."

That makes sense in the Hillbilly Thomists, a "musical collective" of Dominicans, most of whom have Bible-belt roots. The band recently staged a concert in the Grand Ole Opry and, over the past decade, has recorded three albums of music that would sound at home at Appalachian fairs, but not in most church halls.

There's a vital tie linking these songs to the life and work of this band of priests and brothers, said Father Simon Teller (who plays fiddle). Whether singing Appalachian hymns or their own original songs, the Hillbilly Thomists -- dressed in the white habits of their order -- keep returning to images of suffering, sorrow, eternity, hope, grace and redemption.

"We're priests in the Dominican order and that kind of states our vision of the world and the faith and everything we do," he said. "In our day job, we're working a lot with people who are dealing with very concrete situations and have a lot of very concrete questions."

"Holy Ghost Power," for example, is "not sung from the voice of a clergyman. It's sung with the voice of a man who's living a very ordinary life that is going off the rails in a very ordinary way," said Teller. "There's a malaise there and he's unsatisfied by the things of this world."


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Let the palace intrigue over at Disney+ palace begin

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Let the palace intrigue over at Disney+ palace begin

Screenwriter and director Tony Gilroy, showrunner off “Andor” in the Star Wars universe (premiers Sept. 21 on Disney+), spoke recently to a Television Critics Association event.

If even one member of the Religion News Association had been present, we might have an encyclical to discuss.

But let’s give credit where it’s due to Lance Gose of CBR.com (Comic Book Resources). Gose captured a few sound bites from Gilroy, who compared the guardians of Star Wars canon with the Vatican.

“If you think about Star Wars as the Roman Catholic Church, if you think about it as a religion, it has all kinds of factions, groups, and within it, there are all kinds of canon,” Gilroy said.

“We are constantly in touch with the Vatican about what we do, we are constantly checking everything we do,” he added. “We have a very complicated relationship with how we deal with everything that exists. We’re telling a story that we want to tell, and we are not violating the grand canon, let’s put it that way.”

Gilroy’s comparison prompts a few immediate questions for me. These are just for fun, but there may be some perfectly valid religion-beat hooks in here. As people frequently say here at GetReligion: Hold that thought.


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This is sooooo New York Times? Cannibalism is hip, which raises zero religious questions

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This is sooooo New York Times? Cannibalism is hip, which raises zero religious questions

While it isn’t conventional grammar, there are times when people use “New York Times” as descriptive phrase, rather than as a noun. Here’s a common example: “He is a New York Times Republican.” A variation would be, “He is a New York Times conservative columnist.”

From time to time, I have also received emails from readers pointing me toward a story with a description that reads something like this: “There are New York Times stories and there are New York Times stories, but this is a perfect NEW YORK TIMES story.” In other words, this particular story is a symbolic example of the worldview commonly found in America’s most influential newsroom.

If you follow social media, you know that quite a few people had that kind of reaction to a feature that ran the other day with this eye-grabbing double-decker headline:

A Taste for Cannibalism?

A spate of recent stomach-churning books, TV shows and films suggests we’ve never looked so delicious — to one another

As veteran GetReligionista Clemente Lisi put it, via email: “This story wouldn't pass what we at the NY Post used to call the ‘Cheerios test.’ That is, people don't want to read about this as they have breakfast, especially on a Sunday!”

As that headline suggests, this is one of those oh-so New York Times trend pieces about the sophisticated cultural tastes of sophisticated people living in sophisticated zip codes. The only question, with this kind of topic, is whether it appears first in the Times or on National Public Radio. Here is the overture:

An image came to Chelsea G. Summers: a boyfriend, accidentally on purpose hit by a car, some quick work with a corkscrew and his liver served Tuscan style, on toast.

That figment of her twisted imagination is what prompted Ms. Summers to write her novel, “A Certain Hunger,” about a restaurant critic with a taste for (male) human flesh.

Turns out, cannibalism has a time and a place. In the pages of some recent stomach-churning books, and on television and film screens, Ms. Summers and others suggest that that time is now.

The contents of this feature — think issues of omission, as well as commission — led me to a logical question, at least one that would be logical here at GetReligion: What does this influential cultural trend have to do with religion?

Very little, and that surprised me, since cannibalism and religion are often served on the same platter in certain cultures.


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Count the Marvel gods: Is Jesus just one of the gang in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'?

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Count the Marvel gods: Is Jesus just one of the gang in 'Thor: Love and Thunder'?

Greek mythology makes it clear that the great god Zeus loved to party.

So wild things were happening when the Norse demigod Thor and a pack of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superheroes entered Omnipotence City in "Thor: Love and Thunder." The Greek gods are out in force, with Zeus serving as king, but so were many other deities from other cultures.

Valkyrie, the female queer king of New Asgard noted, while calling roll, the off-screen presence of another deity -- the "God of Carpentry."

Inquiring minds want to know if, to quote WhatCulture.com, the film's director Taika Waititi had "confirmed the actual existence of Jesus in the MCU? … Without showing Jesus, Waititi has plausible deniability: Valkyrie could've been talking about the Greek God of Carpenters Hephaestus, or even Lu-Ban, the God of Carpentry from Chinese mythology."

The cosmology of the Marvel super-movies has become so complex that it's hard to know precisely what is being said, noted Thom Parham, a screenwriter who teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Early on, the superheroes were simply aliens, instead of gods or demigods.

"But now we've got sub-deities. They want to have their cake and eat it, too," said Parham, after returning from Comic-Con 2022 in San Diego. "We have gods, and we have demigods. We have Greek gods, and we have Egyptian gods. We have the Eternals, and we have the Celestials."

When Parham heard the "God of Carpentry" reference, he felt that "a dangerous line had been crossed. …What are they saying? I don't think they know, yet."

With "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" poised for November release, the "Avengers" series will reach 30 movies and a dozen or more sequels are planned. The franchise has grossed more than $27 billion at the global box office.

In terms of religious messages, the MCU has come a long way since Captain America, after hearing Loki described as a god, said: "There's only one God … and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that." The New Rockstars YouTube channel counted 50-plus gods in "Thor: Love and Thunder" alone.

It's almost impossible to ignore the role this franchise plays in popular culture worldwide, said film critic Steven Greydanus of DecentFilms.com, who is an ordained Catholic deacon.


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What messages do the Psalms contain about faith that are missing in this praise-song age?

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What messages do the Psalms contain about faith that are missing in this praise-song age?

It's hard to read the Psalms without encountering one of the 65 references to the Hebrew word "mishpat," which is usually translated as "judgments" or "justice."

The term appears 23 times in Psalm 119, in passages worshipers have sung for centuries, such as: "I will praise You with uprightness of heart, when I learn Your righteous judgments. I will keep Your statutes; Oh, do not forsake me utterly!"

But when Old Testament scholar Michael J. Rhodes dug into the Top 25 worship songs listed by Christian Copyright Licensing International, he found symbolic trends in the lyrics. For starters, "justice" was mentioned one time, in one song.

"The poor are completely absent in the top 25. By contrast, the Psalter uses varied language to describe the poor on nearly every page," he wrote, in a Twitter thread. "The widow, refugee, oppressed are completely absent from the top 25. …

“Whereas 'enemies' are the third most common character in the Psalms, they rarely show up in the Top 25. When they do, they appear to be enemies only in a spiritual sense. Maybe most devastatingly … not a SINGLE question is ever posed to God. The Top 25 never ask God anything. Prick the Psalter and it bleeds the cries of the oppressed pleading with God to act."

That's a long way from a Vespers Psalm promising: "The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the fatherless; but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. … Praise the Lord."

When these issues surface in social media they often veer into debates about politics and social justice, noted Craig Greenfield, author of "Urban Halo" and "Subversive Jesus." A former dot-com entrepreneur, he leads the global youth ministry "Alongsiders International," based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The question, he said, is why so many worship songs focus on personal experience and feelings -- alone. This has been true with new hymns for several generations.

"We, in the West, tend to be very individualistic. … The whole approach to worship music uses a Jesus-is-my-boyfriend metaphor," said Greenfield, reached by telephone.


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