I have been viewing the DVD for the just released DVD of the first season of Picket Fences,  which I consider among my favorite TV shows of all time.  I remember many church folks lauding its willingness to engage in topics often avoided by entertainment media.  I just saw the “Christmas” episode from that first season,  and I noticed now,  15 years later,  how thoroughly typical are the “answers” forwarded by the show.

The school is prevented by a court injunction from putting on a school Christmas pageant on public property.  Of course,  the people’s representatives object.  One of them is a protestant pastor (seemingly an Episcopalian, since he wears a collar) who seemed to me 15 years ago to be an awfully “bland” pastor without much theological depth.  This episode,  which I didn’t see that first season,  only confirms that even more so as I view it from the locale of where I have come theologically in the past 2-2 and a half years.

The pastor said the Christmas pageant “symbolizes the love and the spirit of this community”  (sounds like Bush and his “interpretations” which extrapolate Biblical values and re-assign them to represent “the American people”); 

Pastor: “it’s a secular event,  he [a rabbi who sought the injunction against the Christmas pageant] is making it religious” ;

the deputy says “Santa Claus stuff is OK,  religious stuff is off limits”

“you can still have the pageant,  you just can’t do the nativity scene or sing any Christmas carols” 

the pastor says “What’s a Christmas pageant without that?”

Well,  considering that the pastor just said “It’s a secular event” raises some question about what this guy is doing to “Christmas”

Picket Fences may have tackled “controversial subjects” regularly,  but their portrayal of and expectations for “healthy religion” were always a source of irritation to me,  even more so now.  The closing scene where the pageant is eventually held, in the church assembly hall,  which is where the judge said they could keep their references to Jesus ala nativity scene and Christmas carols since it was off of public property,  is a proclamation of a kind that would seem innocuous even in a public setting. 

Throughout the tenure of Picket Fences,  “religion is a private matter” was constantly forwarded by the characters whenever the topic arose. The “litany” that was inserted into the pageant script during the controversy in Rome, Wisconsin (the small town with the “Picket Fences”) sounded so much like liberal civil religion that is occurred to me that Picket Fences was almost always a morality play for Progressives,  but did try to “appeal to the religious audience” by making its characters “somewhat sympathetic”,  even “wrestling with their own doubts. 

I suppose this is about as good as one can expect from a popular show.  In today’s environment,  I suppose they wouldn’t survive the polarization and the “liberal bias” accusations ,  since now there are so many “flag issues” and “code phrases” that would ignite the Bill O’Reilly’s (I don’t remember ever hearing Jerry Falwell make any derogatory comments about Picket Fences). 

But it all serves to remind me how innocuous the church has allowed itself to become, and that it can be so whatever it’s “status” along the conservative to liberal scale of politics.