Christian Desperate Housewives?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from cnsnews.com, December 27, 2005, with the headline: “NBC to Air Series about Dysfunctional Christian Family. A conservative advocacy group is urging its supporters to protest an NBC television series that portrays a completely dysfunctional family as models of the Christian faith. According to the American Family Assn., NBC considers The Book of Daniel to be a positive portrayal of Christ and Christians. 

The main character, Daniel Webster, is a drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her mid-day martinis. 

‘Webster regularly sees and talks with a very unconventional white-robed bearded Jesus,’ AFA said, adding that the Webster family also includes a 23-year-old homosexual Republican son, a 16-year-old daughter who is a drug dealer, and a 16-year-old adopted son who is having an affair with the bishop’s daughter. At the office, Webster’s lesbian secretary is romantically involved with his sister-in-law. 

AFA noted that the series is written by Jack Kenny, a practicing homosexual, who describes himself as being in ‘Catholic recovery,’ and who is quoted as saying that he doesn’t know if all the myth surrounding Jesus is true. 

On its website, NBC describes the Reverend Daniel Webster as an unconventional Episcopalian minister who not only believes in Jesus, he actually sees him and discusses life with him. Webster is challenged on many levels as he struggles to be a good husband, father, and minister while trying to control a nagging addiction to prescription pain killers and an often rocky relationship with the church hierarchy. NBC says the Jesus character’s frequent chats with Daniel serve to remind him of his strength and weaknesses. 

In a press release issued Tuesday, AFA urged concerned citizens to call their local NBC affiliates and ask that the program not be aired.”

Tom: Dave, you don’t have to watch most of the programs on TV today to be aware that they are cesspools of depravity and immorality. You know, those perversions are paraded and focused upon as the chief selling points in the commercial for them. You can’t even watch a football or basketball game without being bombarded with their raunchiness. And if you think or hope that the limits of degeneracy have been reached, we now have it packaged in a family supposedly representative of Christianity, and written by a sexual deviant and an apostate who supplies millions with so-called “insights” into what Christianity is all about.

Dave: That’s bad enough, Tom. Even worse is the fact that this is what people want. If it were not what they want, then they wouldn’t look at it. The program would be taken off, because the advertisers would not want to advertise on a program that nobody is watching. So what these writers are doing, and the producers and so forth, of the television programs or television series is they’re giving people what they want. 

Now, this is what the Bible said that the pastors and preachers would do also: “They will not endure sound doctrine in the last days. They will heap themselves teachers having itching ears,” that is, they want the “well done” from the people, so then they give the people what they want, who will turn them from the truth to myths. 

Now, Tom, I’m not familiar with any of this stuff, but I just happened to see a news item that Sirius radio, I think it is, satellite radio, that they just signed on—is it Howard Stern? And…

Tom: The most foul-mouthed, depraved character in all of media. By the way, I just learned that he’s the highest paid. Incredible!

Dave: And this is big news for Wall Street, and I guess it will make Sirius stock go up, because now we’ve got this depraved guy on there, and this, apparently, is what people want. So what hope is there for our children and grandchildren if the Lord leaves us here much longer? But it’s Sodom and Gomorrah, Tom. This is the world in which we live. 

Now, the tragedy is that many churches (and I’m not making a blanket condemnation because many of them would condemn this themselves), but many churches, as you know, they try to get as close to this stuff as they can. They even show some of these films, videos, and so forth, that are utterly depraved.

Tom: They make Bible studies out of them, Dave! I mean, can you believe that?

Dave: Tom, I’ve been concerned about apostasy for many years, as you know. I never thought it would reach this stage. Parents need to really be aware of this. Now, children, secular—I mean, unsaved families watch this stuff, and they go to the movies and they listen to it, and this is how they begin to think, and this is how they begin to live. These are their heroes and heroines. You know, they want to model their lives after these people. It used to be that they just kind of made fun of families. What’s that guy that lives in the rocks and so forth?

Tom: The Flintstones?

Dave: The Flintstones, yeah, they just made fun of the family. The Flintstones, or what? some of the other comedies. You’ve got the Archie Bunkers, bumblers, and so forth. This is the model of the American family? But it’s gone way beyond that now. It’s into evil, perversion, corruption.

Tom: Right. You know, Dave, the lack of discernment in the church, what we have been seeing, 20 years ago we came out with The Seduction of Christianity, and I think a couple years after that, Dave, we thought it couldn’t get any worse. But now what we have is we’re seeing Christianity at such a superficial level that anything that seems to smack of morality or—you have a little niche here that seems to be recognizing Jesus… I mean, what do we have in this—we have an actual Jesus character in this program that communicates. There he is on camera communicating with this Episcopal priest. People say, “Well, you see, they have a Jesus character! They’re referring to Jesus! Isn’t that wonderful?”

Dave: Yeah, this is not the Jesus of the Bible. And, Tom, I won’t get back on my high horse about this again, but it’s not much worse than somebody pretending to be a straight Jesus out of the Book of Luke or whatever, because you’ve got a human being pretending to be the One who said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” and of whom Paul wrote, “Great is the mystery of Godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” So now we’ve got phony Jesuses all over the place. 

But, Tom, the Christians are laughing at the same jokes, or watching the same movies, or watching the same videos in their homes that they would have been ashamed to go near 30 years ago.