c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Americans don’t need separation of church and state nearly as much as we need to have separation of church from television, movies, and the chronically superficial way the entertainment media deals with religion.
The latest example is a movie soon to arrive at a theater near you called “September Dawn.” It tells the story of the 1857 massacre of 137 pioneers in a Utah meadow _ with the implication that the slaughter was ordered by Brigham Young, then the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as the territorial governor.
Played by Terence Stamp, according to the New York Times, “as austere, remote, and steely” he is said to “give the narrative a sense of Old Testament wrath” by speaking to his followers about “a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of blood.” Never mind that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disputes claims that Young ordered a massacre to keep non-Mormons out of Utah.
This film is about more than just Mormonism and history. It’s about a big subject in the American media’s imagination _ the Napoleonic character and take-no-prisoners ethos attributed to fundamentalist religion.
The supposed warlike mentality of Christians is the message that another media icon, Walter Cronkite, delivers in a mailing in which his opening antiphon is “I understand that freedom of speech is a founding principle of our nation.” Then comes the “however,” as Cronkite writes of his “increasing alarm” at “the intolerant influence of the Religious Right,” saying it “has gone too far” in trying to influence Congress with “its intolerant political platform.”
Faith, he implies, should avoid advocacy and play “a healing role … in public life.” But Cronkite then urges recipients to join an organization whose aim is the very one he decries in evangelicals, to “influence elections and political candidates.”
Mr. Cronkite, once thought the most trusted man in America, may be a beloved elder but nobody has ever accused him of being a philosopher.
That is obvious in his memoir, “A Reporter’s Life,” in which he speaks of gains in racial tolerance in broad, airy and slightly condescending Fourth of July oratory tones: “Today we mingle easily in public places, in our offices and schools, and deep friendships are possible.” He concludes with a numbing platitude, “But, of course, we have a long way to go.”
Cronkite apparently does not recall the decisive role that churches, including those with a fundamentalist charter, played in raising the conscience of the country against slavery and intolerance. Nor, in praising Martin Luther King Jr., does Cronkite note he was a Baptist minister who changed the world by not allowing his faith to be confined to “a healing role in public life.” In fact, King’s religious background is often omitted in media coverage of his remarkable life.
Another reason for the separation of the media from religion was found in Barbara Walters’ exploration of the “Afterlife,” a television special that grabbed one’s attention the way a traffic accident does. Walters, along with Larry King, floats easily in the shallow water of celebrity interviews but flounders in the depths of an important theological discussion. It is small wonder that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington fended her off with Irish good humor, saying that he hoped he would get his hair back in heaven.
In the recently canceled TV show “The Book of Daniel,” the Episcopal priest hero was depicted as having a painkiller habit, a dysfunctional family and regular visits from the classic bearded and white-robed Hollywood Jesus. The Episcopal Church had no comment when the show disappeared suddenly from NBC’s schedule, observing that it had not been consulted in the show’s creation.
Conservatives had mounted an e-mail campaign against the program to protest its contorted efforts to deal with a religious theme they found incredible and offensive. They will now be heavily criticized by those who, like Cronkite, defend freedom of speech with a qualifying “however.”
Entertainment, not religion, is the opium of American existence and it has difficulty understanding that faith is a simple binding force in everyday life and that believers are hardly ever fanatics. The regular windbag blunders of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are matched, if not surpassed, by the media stars, including Cronkite, Walters and Larry King, and imaginatively impoverished scriptwriters. There should be a wall separating them from any serious exposition of religious faith.
MO/PH END RNS
(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)
Editors: To obtain a photo of Eugene Cullen Kennedy, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
