Flashback: Norman Lear as a pop-culture religious seeker
Is it accurate to call modern Hollywood a truly "secular" environment?
Let’s say that it’s an ordinary night late in 1991, back when network television was still the biggest entertainment game around.
So a new situation comedy comes on and the theme song offers readers the following lyrics, while establishing the show’s worldview and agenda:
Take my hand baby, 'cause it's cold outside. This world keeps changing, right before our eyes.
But I know one thing always stays the same, we all need somebody to call our name.
I don't know if this is a love song, maybe I've been singing it all wrong, trying to get my message through to you.
As sure as the sun shines above us, there's something out there that loves us, waiting patiently for us to see — love begins at home with a family.
At the time, I immediately wondered if, in terms of Associated Press style for references to God, the pivotal word in that final line was “something” or “Something.” After all, this “Something out there” also “loves us.”
Let’s stop right there for a moment, before we move on. Gentle readers, how would you interpret those lines? Does that theme song sound “secular” to you?
Now, would it matter that this “Sunday Dinner” series was one of the final network projects from the comedy legend Norman Lear, the mind behind trailblazing work such as “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Maude”?
Of course, there was more to Norman Lear than his on-screen work. He was also a major player in a wide range of old-school liberal causes. That included founding People for the American Way, which existed primarily to oppose the emerging Religious Right. Meanwhile, Lear aimed his share of barbs at the Hollywood establishment for ignoring the role of faith in American life and culture.
Lear died several months before the birth of Rational Sheep. However, I would like to offer readers a flashback to a “Crossroads” podcast created at that time, as well as my “On Religion” column on Lear’s complex and fascinating legacy. I think this material needs to be part of discussions in this Substack project.
Why? You could make a case that, after years of being identified as a cultural Jew (and maybe an agnostic), Lear evolved into some kind of liberal theist. That’s a “signal,” one beamed from the highest levels of American culture.
Yes, I also read the online rumors that shortly before his passing Lear followed one of his children into the Catholic church. I was able to contact the family — which declined comment. Thus, I left that angle out of my column. After all, Lear’s loved ones had just lost their patriarch.
Thus, here is the GetReligion.org post that I wrote about that podcast: “Norman Lear's America was liberal, but not totally secular.”
When you are listening to that podcast, please know that it contains an error of fact — one that I corrected online as soon as I could. That’s what journalists need to do when we make mistakes.
During this recording, I mentioned that I thought I had interviewed Lear by telephone decades ago while doing research for my media-apologetics class at Denver Seminary.
It helps to know that I recorded that podcast on a trip — placing me 500+ miles away from my file cabinets containing archived folders of material from decades of reporting. When I got home a few days later, I found that my interview notes were with not with Lear, but with someone else connected to the show.
That’s an error of fact, but it doesn’t really affect the contents of the podcast (and the error was not repeated in the syndicated column). The folder also contained copies of several newspaper and magazine reports about “Sunday Dinner,” including important Lear quotes. I had also saved a full transcript of an amazing 1992 Lear lecture about the role of faith in American life.
Before I share that column, here is an important quote from that GetReligion post, drawn from Associated Press coverage:
Lear “took television away from dopey wives and dumb fathers, from the pimps, hookers, hustlers, private eyes, junkies, cowboys and rustlers that constituted television chaos, and in their place he put the American people,” the late Paddy Chayefsky, a leading writer of television’s early “golden age,” once said.
The American people?
In a way, that’s true. But even in the breakthrough “All in the Family” series, the blunt (to say the least) blue-collar anti-hero lived in New York City (Queens, to be precise). Could Lear have written a sitcom about ordinary conservative believers somewhere in the Bible Belt?
OK, it’s time to look at “Sunday Dinner.” Here is the entire opening episode via YouTube, for those with 22 minutes or so to spare.
Also, here is the text of my syndicated column about Lear’s life and legacy (“Norman Lear: It’s impossible to talk about America without including faith”).
Early in the premier of Norman Lear's sit-com "Sunday Dinner," the beautiful environmentalist T.T. Fagori raised her eyes to heaven and, with a sigh, entered a spiritual minefield.
"Chief?", she asked God. "You got a minute?"
In addition to praying out loud in prime time, this character offered a theological reverie at dinner while meeting the family of her fiancé, a 56-year-old widower nearly three decades her elder. The problem: His granddaughter heard Fagori mention God during a science lecture.
"You see, I talk about extending 'love thy neighbor' to include animals, plants, stuff like that. I say that the natural world is the largest sacred community to which we all belong," Fagori explained. "I talk about cosmic piety because the same atoms that form the galaxies are in all of us and it's the universe that carries the deep mysteries of our existence within itself.
"You see how all that sounds pretty spiritual. … So, when the kids hear me say these things, some of them think they hear the word 'God,' but they don't. I don't actually mention it. Interesting, huh?"
This 1991 comedy flopped, but it was an important statement from Lear, whose December 5 death at 101 years of age closed his career as lightning rod in popular culture and politics.
For decades, Lear described himself as a cultural Jew who didn't practice any traditional form of faith. He also founded People for the American Way, an old-school liberal advocacy group on church-state issues. But this television icon became more and more intrigued with religious faith, both as a force in American life and as a topic ignored by Hollywood.
During "Sunday Dinner" press events, Lear argued that America was caught in "a deep spiritual malaise, and nobody is addressing it. The Religious Right did for a period and still continues to. But mainline churches don't do that good a job of it. And the media don't deal with it at all."
This show's environmentalist mystic "comes from the certain knowledge, as I do, that a living faith is the best design for living," Lear told Religion New Service. "She obviously knows everything Jesus said and would, with every instinct, try to live it. I think she's read the 'Tao Te Ching' by the Chinese philosopher Lao-tze."
Fagori absorbed the "creation spirituality" work of the Dominican priest Matthew Fox. But Lear said her main Catholic influence was the Passionist priest Thomas Berry, a self-proclaimed "eco-theologian." He bought the rights to Berry's “The Dream of the Earth” so his heroine could freely quote the book.
At the same time, Lear wanted to deal with complex, painful family issues — as in "All in the Family," "The Jeffersons" and "Maude." The "Sunday Dinner" theme song ended with: "I don't know if this is a love song, maybe I've been singing it all wrong, trying to get my message through to you. As sure as the sun shines above us, there's something out there that loves us, waiting patiently for us to see — love begins at home with a family."
That didn't sound agnostic. Did "there's something out there that loves us" refer to God?
In a 2017 testimony posted by Harvard (University) Memorial Church, Lear's daughter Madeline described how her family's spiritual search shaped her own conversion to Catholicism. "I've always believed in God. My parents believe in God, too. My mom was raised Christian, my dad, Jewish, though they would call themselves 'spiritual but not religious.' And so, I wasn't raised with any kind of formal religion," she wrote.
But faith, broadly defined, mattered to her father. In a 1992 Harvard address, Lear discussed his drive to explore the importance of humanity's "mysterious inner life, the fertile invisible realm that is the wellspring for our species' creativity and morality. It is the portion of ourselves that impels us to create art and literature. … It is that portion of our being that gives rise to our sense of awe and wonder and longing for truth, beauty and a higher order of being.
"For want of a better term, one could call it the spirit-led or spiritual life. … And yet, as a student of the American psyche, at no time in my life can I remember our culture being so estranged from this essential part of itself.”
Again, do those words sound “secular”?
I realize that Lear is now a figure in the past. My question is this: In the era of “nones” and “none of the aboves,” what is the current shape of Hollywood faith? I would argue that it is not purely “secular,” as in beliefs that are free of religious images and content.
I would argue that Hollywood — the sprawling and troubled Disney empire leaps to mind — loves the supernatural, brave heroes (of whatever gender), worthy causes (when the establishment establishment considers them worthy), the creation around us, romance, etc., etc. Most of all, it proclaims that when push comes to shove viewers will, in their hearts, know what is right (for them). They will find their own “truth.”
Yes, that is foggy. How do religious leaders debate doctrinal fog? For starters, it helps to pay close attention to the content of worthy “signals.” Right?
Please #discuss.
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