August 20, 2001
New book finds faith in Simpsons
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Don't have a cow, man, but Bart Simpson and his family are about to hit bookstores nationwide as poster-children for religious virtue.
___"The Gospel According to the Simpsons," to be published Sept. 1 by Westminster John Knox Press, devotes 164 pages to an examination of the spiritual lessons from the long-running animated TV series.
THE SIMPSONS: Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie.
___(The Simpsons images by Matt Groening are copyrighted art of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved).
___The show, once branded as sacrilegious by conservative Christians, offers a unique look at how the average American actually lives out a religious faith, according to Mark Pinsky, the new book's author.
___Watching the show with his children to make sure it was appropriate for their viewing brought an epiphany for the religion reporter for the Orlando Sentinel. He was surprised by "the favorable way religion, in its broadest sense, was presented in the series, and what a central role faith played in the lives of the characters," he writes in the book's introduction.
___More than any other prime-time television series (except maybe "Touched by an Angel" or "Seventh Heaven"), "The Simpsons" presents an American family that experiences religious faith like many real American families, Pinsky said.
___The Simpsons attend church every week. They pray. They seek God's help in times of crisis. They believe in a literal heaven and hell.
___Try finding any of that in "Friends."
___"The Simpsons are more like what most Americans do with their lives," Pinksy said in an interview. "They are most reflective of the habits of people on the other side of the screen. This is a reality show in a way that few other shows on television are realityshows."
NED FLANDERS, the Simpsons' born-again neighbor, invites them to Praiseland.
___And although it is just a fictional TV show, its impact on how people think about religion may be more significant than most Christians would suspect, Pinsky argues.
___"For all those folks who have argued that repeated exposure to sex and violence on the screen has a coarsening effect on more impressionable viewers, those folks ought to look at the corollary offered by the Simpsons," he said. "If repeated exposure to a family that believes and prays, ... if you watch them week in and week out, might that not have a salutary effect in the same way?"
___It's not that the Simpsons are ideal Christians, Pinsky readily acknowledges. Their failings, in fact, are part of what makes their religious experiences so real, he suggests.
___His book examines these religious connections thematically, ranging from Homer Simpson's view of God and prayer to the influence of next-door neighbor Ned Flanders, an evangelical Christian, to the treatment of Catholics, Jews and other religious groups on the show.
___Pinsky is an unlikely candidate to have drawn public attention to the connectionbetween the Simpsons and Christianity. He describeshimself as a middle-aged Jew who thinks most television programming is "of the devil."
REV. LOVEJOY expounds on the hereafter.
___Nevertheless, after watching a few episodes of the show and reading scripts from previous episodes, the veteran religion reporter quickly saw a surprising theme in the Simpsons' world. He wrote a piece about this for the Orlando Sentinel, one of the first published articles to point out the connection between religion and the Simpsons. That article was so well received that it inspired Pinsky to keep digging.
___The result is this book. Pinsky already is considering writing a companion book of Sunday School lessons on the topic.
___He believes the book will appeal to die-hard "Simpsons" fans and to serious Christians who never have watched a single episode but are curious about the topic. And it should have a big appeal to older youth and college-age students, who constitute a large share of the series' fan base.
___Pinsky said he's already been getting calls from youth ministers who've heard about the book and want to get it. They are hopeful, he said, of using the book to create opportunities for reaching young adults.
___Meanwhile, he's started work on another book that will be of interest to Southern Baptists. That project, "The Gospel According to Disney," will examine the religious messages found in every Disney feature film.
___(The Simpsons images by Matt Groening are copyrighted art of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved).
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