downright fools.
For years, I'd seen Protestant ministers portrayed in this way, and I'd often wondered as to how this affected my Protestant brothers and sisters. Now I was noticing that Catholic priests were negatively portrayed as well. The pedophilia scandal clearly colored these portrayals, but at the root, there was the old Hollywood skepticism of the man or woman of faith, and a certain Hollywood arrogance that malignant portrayals of Christians were entirely acceptable to American audiences.
Even in my atheist days, I had resented this cavalier treat-ment of people of faith. After all, I'd lived for nearly thirty-eight years in two worlds - the world of San Francisco and Berkeley liberalism, and the back-home world of relatives in New Orleans and Texas. I'd been deeply and silently offended by the Hollywood assumption that believers were stupid, or lying about their beliefs.
Now as a believer, I experienced an even greater skepticism about these routine television portrayals. And the question plagued me: if we are a nation of churchgoing Christians - and other fervent believers, including Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims - why does television not reflect this fact? Why does television seem to say the opposite, that we are a nation of skeptics bedeviled by a few noisy bother-some political Christian fools?
I haven't found a satisfactory answer to my questions. I do know, from personal experience with network executives, that serious Christian programming is not something these people want to touch. Though the nightly crime shows might ridicule ministers and priests, the networks fear the power of the Christian audience to reject a Christian program with e-mail campaigns, boycotts, and jammed fax machines. As a consequence the negative portrayal of the individual Christian seems to be the norm on national television. And there is a total vacuum when it comes to faith-based programming.
Motion picture studios seem equally leery of anything that might arouse a Christian backlash. Yet films contain the same negative picture of ministers and priests.
My opinion is that most network and studio executives don't really understand the Christians of America. They have been powerfully impressed with the success of Mell Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, but they don't really understand why this film was a success. And they know that they themselves cannot replicate Gibson's success. As a consequence, though they talk about tapping into the Christian audience, and developing more Christian programming, they are confused as to what to do, and what might offend Christians or what Christians might want.
Recent political involvement on the part of certain Christian denominations has further complicated the picture for people in the entertainment business, just as it has drawn criticism from some secular groups.
I cannot recall a time in America when there has been more talk of religion and politics. But I've also noted that many Christians have become disillusioned with overt political involvement and are reconsidering the meaning of separa-tion of church and state.
The heat of the religious debate on political issues, and the number of books published today on the subject - all this speaks to me of the importance of faith in people's lives. Even the most strident critics of political religious groups are often high-principled individuals who care very much about how a good and fruitful life is lived.
But to return to my travels through Christian America, I found something else besides faith.
I found controversy and division within religion itself.
I encountered it in the most casual of ways.
I hadn't thought it radical, for instance, for a deeply orthodox Catholic to hope for the eventual ordination of women.
Or for a Catholic to believe that our gay Christian brothers and sisters would soon be accepted into the fold. I hadn't thought it radical to suggest that all churches would soon be more accepting of unconventional behavior involving sex.
But these did prove to be radical suggestions. And I soon learned that the Body of Christ is deeply divided on matters of sex and gender.
I have found these same divisions in Protestant Christianity as well as Catholic - congregations strongly against "feminism" and gays, and other congregations far more accepting, and embattled, on the issues of women's ministry or the right of gays to worship within the church.
Sex is an obsession of contemporary Christianity, even more now perhaps than it was in 1960 when I left my church.
In the face of all the reading material on these questions, I have to remind myself of my central vocation. It is not to learn church history or to become involved with church politics. It