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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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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

Before wearing the Imperial State Crown, Queen Elizabeth II knelt at the Westminster Abbey altar for a moment of silent, private prayer.

The three-hour coronation in 1953 contained myriad oaths and symbols, but the most ancient rite -- Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher anointing Elizabeth with holy oil -- sought the highest possible blessing on her life's work and eventually her death.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he prayed, "who by his Father was anointed with the oil of gladness … that by the assistance of His heavenly grace you may govern and preserve the people committed to your charge in wealth, peace and godliness; and after a long and glorious course of ruling a temporal kingdom wisely, justly and religiously, you may at last be made partaker of an eternal kingdom."

Televised for the first time, 27 million BBC viewers watched what Oxford don C.S. Lewis called the "tragic splendour" of this drama.

“Over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it," he noted, writing to an American friend.

It was "a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) -- awe -- pity -- pathos -- mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be his vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate."

Few could have imagined that the woman many now call "Elizabeth the Great" would reign for 70 years, striving to lead by example after the suffering of World War II and into an age in which humanity would be united by the Internet, terrorism, pandemics and other challenges.


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An old question that's back in the news: Why can’t non-Muslims visit Mecca and Medina?

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An old question that's back in the news: Why can’t non-Muslims visit Mecca and Medina?

THE QUESTION:

Why does Islam ban non-Muslims from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum is among the last people Saudi Arabians might want to listen to. Yet he penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month urging Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to end Islam’s long-standing ban against non-Muslims entering the faith’s two holiest locations, Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad issued the Quran and founded the religion 14 centuries ago, and Medina, where he led the first Muslim regime.

This prohibition hit the news when Gil Tamary, an American Jew and TV journalist in Israel, illicitly slipped into Mecca to record material and broadcast a much-hyped 10-minute travelogue. Muslims have enforced the ban so carefully, Pipes reports, that only 18 non-Muslims are known to have ever entered Mecca, including Tamary and two others in recent decades.

The violation of sacred space provoked an international furor among not only Muslims but Israelis and westerners who feared a rise in hostility. The regime has filed criminal charges against Tamary and his Saudi driver. Tamary apologized and said his intent was to “showcase the importance of Mecca and the beauty of the religion” and thereby foster religious tolerance. Guess again.

But cheerleader Pipes thinks Tamary “boldly challenged an archaic status quo that the world unthinkingly accepts. Bravo to him for breaking a taboo. . . . He deserves respect, not condemnation.” Pipes even wants unspecified international organizations to lobby for open access with the Saudis.

Pipes did not mention another exclusionary policy noted in the U.S. State Department’s 2022 religious freedom report. Saudi Arabia strictly forbids all non-Muslim houses of worship nationwide, though private or secret Christian gatherings are known to occur.


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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

This week something unexpected happened after I filed my national “On Religion” column, something that I have never seen before in my decades of religion-news work.

What? A retired literature professor responded to my column with a poem.

The topic was easy to predict. Like millions of other people around the world, but especially in Great Britain and the Commonwealth, I have spent many hours watching (primarily on British television) the rites and public drama surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

I will post the column at GetReligion at the usual time this weekend, after it has run in most newspapers linked to the Universal syndicate. But the podcast team decided to go ahead and use it as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” (CLICK HERE to tune that in), since so many people are talking about the death of the queen. Here is a short clip from that column:

Throughout her life, Queen Elizabeth II understood the symbolic importance of kneeling, according to former Durham Bishop N.T. Wright. After one Church of England synod, she privately expressed surprise — disappointment, even — that worshippers in Westminster Abbey simply lined up to receive Holy Communion, instead of kneeling.

“Kneeling was important to her,” said the popular author, in a “Premier Christianity” tribute. In his encounters with her, Wright found the queen “very friendly and clearly a very devout, what we would consider ‘old fashioned’ Church of England Christian. I remember thinking during more than one Christmas broadcast, she has just preached the Gospel to the nation in a way that perhaps nobody else could have done.”

In response to the column, a reader raised in Canada — but best known for his work at Baylor University in Texas and at Peking University — wrote a poem and sent it to me.

David Lyle Jeffrey, now a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies in Religion, noted that he has never considered himself a “royalist,” but the queen’s death is certainly a time to explore the “essence of her admirable Christian character and gracious reign.” The former Baylor provost and literature professor entitled the poem “Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen).” Here is how it ends:


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NBC News promotes its own Satanism-scare report, which is itself a kind of scare-news device

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NBC News promotes its own Satanism-scare report, which is itself a kind of scare-news device

I have always found it interesting when major news organizations conduct a public-relations blitz — primarily with messages to other journalists — promoting one of their own news reports.

Obviously, the message to other journalists is this: We deserve praise for doing this story. The implied message is usually: We were brave to do this story. Now, all you other newsroom folks should follow our courageous example and cover this story, too.

In this case, we are talking about an NBC News press release with this dramatic double-decker headline:

NBC NEWS: SATANIC PANIC IS MAKING A COMEBACK, FUELED BY QANON BELIEVERS AND GOP INFLUENCERS

Baseless Accusations Are Branding People As Satanist Pedophiles At The Speed Of The Internet — Just Ask A GOP Prosecutor Who Recently Lost Re-Election.

There are several levels to This. Big. Story.

(1) There is a totally valid story about Internet-based attacks against a progressive Republican — David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County — attempting to smear him with wild stories about Satanic, cannibalistic attacks on children. Leavitt is active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt.

(2) There is a valid, and by now very familiar, story about QAnon, politicians, pedophiles, cannibalism, pizza and, of course, the work of Satan in one form of another (hold that thought). If you have followed GetReligion, you know that we think the world of QAnon conspiracy theories is important and worthy of tight, fact-based coverage.

(3) There are some, repeat “some,” Republicans on the right fringe who now rush to connect Satanic worship to all kinds of trends in the free-for-all that is modern American culture. These politicos have been known to blur the line between organized, public Satanic religious groups and the secret world (it’s hard to know the size of this phenomenon) of people attempting to practice dark arts of various kinds.

(4) There are many conservative, and very mainstream, religious believers who openly state their beliefs that incarnate evil — as in the biblical Satan — is at work, on one level or another, in activities including child abuse, domestic violence, terrorism, warfare, etc. Yes, some believe that using permanent forms of gender-transition surgery and puberty blockers on children fall into this category.

It’s important to note, however, that someone like Pope Francis saying that he sees Satanic forces at work in our world is not the same thing as people making accusations against, for example, the specific and official Church of Satan. Yes, Pope Francis has probably used more Satan-based language than any pope in several generations, including on some issues linked to the Sexual Revolution.

This NBC News report takes the important story at level (1) and links it to level (2) — which is valid. The problem, from my journalistic point of view, is that NBC News then attempts to take some poll-based information about questions at level (3) and even (4) and then blend that material with (2) Qanon and the (1) attacks on someone like Leavitt, arguing that belief in the reality of incarnate evil (a mainstream Christian belief, as in this Catholic Catechism reference) is creating a wider trend that threatens American democracy, or words to that effect.


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Here's a solid religion information source for office, home libraries and (of course) newsrooms

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Here's a solid religion information source for office, home libraries and (of course) newsrooms

Here are some interesting facts about war-ravaged Ukraine you might not have heard:

* The nation was 97% Christian in 1900, slumped to 60% when atheistic Soviet Communists held power, and has rebounded to 86%. But in one survey only 20% of Ukrainians said religion is “very important” for them.

* The Orthodox Church historically under the Moscow Patriarchate has 13.5 million members. But even before the current Russian invasion, the young rival Orthodox Church of the independent Kyiv Patriarchate had gained a bigger following of 16 million.

* Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic Protestants, though a small minority, have so thrived since national independence in 1991 that Ukraine is known as Eastern Europe’s “Bible Belt.” Pentecostal believers who once survived in the underground church are now a force in civic affairs.

* Despite electing the first Jewish president, anti-Semitic incidents still occur.

* Regarding morals, “domestic violence is a massive problem,” especially in COVID-19 times, with complaints up 40% in the first half of 2020 compared with 2019.

Why mention these newsworthy pieces of information?

That’s a sampling of the sort of data about each of 233 countries you’ll find in the brand-new “Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe” (Zondervan Academic, $29.99 paperback). This valuable and inexpensive resource updates key information from the 2019 edition of the invaluable “World Christian Encyclopedia” (Edinburgh University Press, list price $270 with discounts online).

The new book’s editor is Gina Zurlo — https://ginazurlo.com; gzurlo@gordonconwell.edu) — co-editor of the “Encyclopedia” and co-director of the independent agency that produces it, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.


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New York Times pursues ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in massive story that raises (some) Jewish ire

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New York Times pursues ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in massive story that raises (some) Jewish ire

The past week has been Jewish education week in the media as there were several stories that hit the fan all at once. We’re talking about:

* This Washington Post piece on New York state forcing ultra-Orthodox schools to teach secular subjects;

* This New York Times blockbuster — no other word for it — on how Hasidic Jewish schools are operating a network of madrassa-like institutions whereby students barely learn English, much less basic education staples such as history or math.

* The Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a decision by liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor who ruled that Yeshiva University in New York City could — for doctrinal reasons — ban an official LGBTQ club/advocacy group on its campus.

The Times investigation is the behemoth of the lot, taking more than a year to compile and be published before the state’s Board of Regents votes today (Sept. 13) on whether a yeshiva’s (religious school’s) secular curriculum (such as it is) could be rejected by the state.

It was a massive amount of work in terms of plowing through public records, 275 people interviewed, tons of Yiddish documents translated and, according to Brian Rosenthal, one of the two lead reporters, it’s probably the first time the Grey Lady has published a Yiddish translation or a news report. Here’s the beginning:

The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York’s largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring.

But in 2019, the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students.

Every one of them failed.

Which was by design, the article continued, because these schools are meant to steep students solely in Jewish law and tradition in Yiddish-only surroundings to the point that many students never learn English, so find it impossible to get a job in the outside world.


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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

Confession: I am still paying next to zero attention to American telly when it comes to rites linked to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I’m tuned into BBC World and, via YouTube, streaming Sky News.

The few times I’ve flipped over to the major U.S. networks left me with the same impression as before — that the Royal Family is viewed as kind of a cleaned-up version of the Kardashians, with the queen as a sad, nobel celebrity matriarch. See this earlier post: “Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?”

I think the big gaps (other than details about her faith) have been any sense of (a) the gravitas added by her World War II service, including her work driving an Army ambulance. Also, it’s poignant that, (b) until the stunning abdication of King Edward VIII, she was raised with zero expectation of becoming queen. This relatively normal childhood (until age 10) created tight ties to her parents and shaped her views on family.

Yes, the BBC has had a very heavy emphasis on the admiration for the queen seen in mainline, establishment churches and minority faiths. At some point I would like to know if the admiration for Elizabeth II common among American evangelicals also exists in the UK. Click here for a roundup of that, including these typical remarks from Bishop Andrew Forster of the Church of Ireland:

"Throughout her life she set Christ, and his message and his teaching, as the primary thing that has helped her and blessed her and I think made her into the incredible monarch, sovereign that she was."

Bishop Forster described the late Queen as the "grandmother of the nation".

"Maybe it was because people understood that she had an understanding of some of the issues that we might face behind closed doors, some of the issues of increased frailty, of family strife — there was that sense of a grandmotherly figure who understood the challenges of life," he said.

In my previous post, I noted that a Washington Post feature about the queen’s “most memorable remarks” that said her public appearances were “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections.” There was content about her Christmas messages, while omitting any faith content.

However, the religion desk — veteran Sarah Pulliam Bailey (a former GetReligion contributor) — went in depth on one of the most interesting religion-news angles from the queen’s long life: “Fact checking ‘The Crown’: Queen Elizabeth’s faith and her close relationship with preacher Billy Graham.”


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Plug-In: Five newsworthy faith facts about the life and work of Queen Elizabeth II

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Plug-In: Five newsworthy faith facts about the life and work of Queen Elizabeth II

When news broke Thursday of Queen Elizabeth II’s death at age 96, I immediately consulted with the leading expert of her 70 years on the throne I know: my wife, Tamie. Seriously, I texted my bride of 32 years.

“Yes, I’ve been watching,” she replied. “The news and social, that is.”

A few years ago, Tamie, a fellow writer, sent the queen a letter and received one back in an enveloped stamped “Royal Mail” from Buckingham Palace.

“She never sat for an interview, so a few documentaries are the closest thing to hearing her asked/answering questions,” Tamie told me. “I thought it was worth writing to tell her how much I enjoyed it, and this response came a few weeks later on her behalf.”

“The Queen wishes me to write and thank you for your card and very kind message,” the reply said.

Did Elizabeth actually see my wife’s letter? Tamie has no way of knowing. I’m a skeptical journalist, so I’m guessing not. But it’s cool to imagine that she did.

In the meantime, here are five facts about religion in the life of Elizabeth, who wrote the foreword to a 2016 British Bible Society book titled “The Servant Queen and the King She Serves” (that king being Jesus):

(1) She was the official head of the Church of England.

The Associated Press obituary by Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui explains:

In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the queen is head of state but has little direct power; in her official actions she does what the government orders. However, she was not without influence. The queen, officially the head of the Church of England, once reportedly commented that there was nothing she could do legally to block the appointment of a bishop, “but I can always say that I should like more information. That is an indication that the prime minister will not miss.”

(2) She spoke openly about her Christian faith.

Writing for Religion News Service, Catherine Pepinster notes:


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