This holiday season, rather than dwelling on problems here on Earth, television is shifting focus. Skyward.
What’s up with heaven? Tiptoeing around the subject of religion, wanting to cash in on a pop-cultural trend, TV is devoting attention to the hereafter.
Tuesday on ABC, (8 p.m. on KMGH-Channel 7) Barbara Walters spends two hours asking a diverse group of clergy, scientists and celebrities their views of “Heaven: Where Is It? How Do We Get There?”
The snappy production is Comparative Religion 101 Lite with Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven” ringing in your ears. Awful but mesmerizing: You find yourself wondering, is she really asking the Dalai Lama if she can kiss him on the cheek? Is she really consulting Jackie Mason, Maria Shriver and Richard Gere on serious matters of spirituality?
The next week, on Dec. 25, “Dateline NBC” talks to a boy with a terminal illness about his beliefs regarding heaven. There is something a bit eerie about the focus on the afterlife this season. Have people given up on what’s happening here on Earth, preferring to think about the peace promised in the hereafter?
CNN last week ran a story on “letters to God,” and the Jerusalem post office where such missives end up. Not long ago it was standard procedure for TV reporters to run feel-
good stories about kids’ letters to Santa. Nowadays, the story is “prayers, pleas and other petitions pouring in by the hundreds” (one addressed, The Almighty c/o The Wailing Wall).
What’s going on?
Deborah Caldwell, managing editor of belief.net, a spirituality and faith website, traces pop culture’s interest in spirituality to the success of “The Passion of the Christ” and “The DaVinci Code” – two huge recent “cultural touchstones.”
The trend had built with the success of TV’s “Touched by an Angel,” she said, but with the film and book “Hollywood realized there was money to be made in spiritual entertainment.” The Christian marketing of “Narnia” is the latest evidence of that trend.
In terms of TV news/entertainment specials, interest began with the two successful
Peter Jennings specials, on Jesus and Paul.
“There’s a tremendous interest in anything having to do with the historical Jesus,” said Caldwell, citing print newsmagazines and cable TV’s spate of Bible-archaeology programs.
The Walters effort is not nearly as thoughtful or as serious an inquiry as Jennings’ pair of religious-themed specials.
In Walters’ “Heaven” theme package, clips from “Ghost,” “Defending Your Life,” “Angels in America” and other films testify that the question tugs at the American soul.
Cardinal Theodore McCerrick, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington, tells Walters the purpose of life “is to come to the end of your life at peace with the Lord so that you may find an eternal happiness in heaven. This life is not what we’re made for. We’re made for heaven.”
Conversely, Rabbi Neil Gilman from the New York Jewish Theological Seminary notes, “There is a tremendous emphasis in our tradition about what you do with yourself in your lifetime here on Earth.”
Islamic scholar Feisal Abdul Rauf says, “the real life is the next life.” And the Rev. Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals says being a born-again believer is the “only guarantee” of getting into heaven.
Walters doesn’t delve: She smiles and grants face time.
In November, “Dateline NBC” ventured into matters of faith with “Closer to the Truth.” Correspondent Keith Morrison undertook a journalistic tour through history and religion to get a realistic reading of the Nativity story – which, polls say, most Americans believe to be true. The promos asked, “What if everything you thought you knew wasn’t the whole story?”
Treating the question like a mystery story, Morrison journeyed back in time to report on “The Birth of Jesus,” a sweeps- appropriate title at the very least. The program strenuously observed that it would look for history while respecting everyone’s personal beliefs.
All this does not mean television is getting better at talking about religion.
“I think it’s not that TV is getting more adept – which would imply that the coverage is more even-handed, more in-
depth, more enriching – but that there is simply more in the way of religious themes on TV,” said Jennifer Pozner, a feminist writer and media critic.
Belief.net’s Caldwell is less critical.
“Network television caters to the demands of the audience,” she said. “Therefore it will tend to be lighter, less complicated, more entertainment oriented, lacking in complications when talking about the Bible or Jesus, Paul, the Gnostic Gospels, Mary Magdalene.
“All the specials I’ve ever seen on that have been pretty sensational (in the tabloid sense) and fairly shallow. I have sympathy for that because we’re popularizers, too, at belief.net.”
Television’s flirtations with faith are better than nothing, she suggests. “Spirituality of all kinds is what people are talking about now. Because the world is scarier now. And because of the media, people are more aware of how scary it is.
“It can only be good,” Caldwell said, to have mass media in some way addressing religion.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
