Last night I watched some (not all) of a four-hour epic on Bravo TV called "The 100 Greatest TV Characters." It was fun to reminisce as I watched clips from some old favorite shows from the 1950s through the present day. But afterward, I reflected, there was not one minister on the list! (I didn't see them all, so I could be wrong, but I don't think so, as the theme song from "Monk" goes -- another of my favorite TV characters.) Dang!
I do think we ministers have gotten a bad rap over the years on TV, and I'm not talking about the "real-life" TV preachers. (That's a subject for another blog.) I mean the fictional ones. As I think back over my TV experience, I come up with a few names of TV preachers that might have been candidates for role models. Or not.
1. Rev. Trask from "Dark Shadows." If you watched this soap-opera-turned-vampire-story, you know they jumped around from time period to time period, going back to the 1700s, so some version or other of Trask turned up in different centuries. Rev. Trask was, I am sorry to say, pure evil. He had poor little Victoria Winters arrested for witchcraft and all sorts of things. He was suspicious of everybody. He was the epitome of the close-minded religious type (I can't bring myself to use the word Christian here) who finds no joy whatsoever in faith but uses "belief" to try to hammer everyone else into a mold of his own creation. Some role model for ministry.
2. Father Mulcahy from "M*A*S*H*." Quite the opposite of Trask, Father Mulcahy was a good-hearted soul who really loved the Lord and cared about the people in his unit. But the poor dear always seemed to be clueless. Hawkeye and the gang saw the absurdity of trying to be healers in the middle of a war whose objective was to destroy life, and they developed a system for dealing with the insanity of it so it didn't drive them crazy. Father Mulcahy doesn't seem to be a part of their system, just a minor character floating around on the outside, trying to offer a helpful word here and there but never quite getting it. Hawkeye made the top 100 TV characters list. Father Mulcahy didn't.
3. Robert Blake as Father Hardstep. Dang, I'm forgetting the name of the show. He played a tough, gritty priest in an inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood back in the '80s. Yeah, we like a priest who can shoot pool and struggle with his feelings for a woman he knew before he went into the priesthood. But Father Hardstep was probably a little too, er, secular for most folks.
4. Father Tim of the Mitford series of books. OK, I haven't seen Father Tim on TV yet, although maybe someone has made some movies-for-cable based on the books (I have a vague recollection that someone has). Actually, Father Tim's not bad as a fictional priest -- I think he's supposed to be Episcopal. Someone introduced me to him when I first came into my small-town parish. My first reaction was, "Oh, no, do people in my congregation think my life is like Father Tim's?" Because it's not, no, not by a long shot. Mitford -- which I understand is based on Blowing Rock, N.C., is a kind of present-day Mayberry, which I think was also based on a North Carolina town. It's a cute little town with its little quirks and foibles. I don't live in Mitford. I doubt seriously that a real-life Mitford exists. And while a bachelor Father Tim may have a cute single woman move in next door, and they develop a relationship and end up getting married, that doesn't usually happen in real life, especially if Father Tim is the woman. A single man never moves in next door. Trust me.
5. The Vicar of Dibley. I confess I've only seen a couple of episodes of this British show, but I gotta tell ya, the vicar is probably the closest I've come to finding a role model for ministry on TV. When the ancient rector of a tiny parish somewhere in the English countryside keels over dead one day, the bishop sends the congregation a new, young priest. (At least, I think they call them priests in the Church of England.) Except, this young priest is a woman. They have a bit of a time dealing with that one. But they do. The actress who plays the vicar is actually a comedian, and the show is really funny. Trust me on this. I'm probably going to be in big trouble with my congregation for even suggesting they might be like the members of the church at Dibley, so I won't go into any comparisons. I am told I should watch the episode where they make the vicar dress up like the Easter bunny. 'Nuff said.
Tomorrow is Sunday. No blog entry tomorrow. I encourage you to worship in the church of your choice. Peace be with you.
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