Tuning out religion: portrayals of faith on network television range from the offensive to the absurd.

Portrayals of faith on network television range from the offensive to the absurd.

MEET Father Ray. The lead character on the new ABC series Nothing Sacred, he is, according to ABC, a brash iconoclast, who regularly runs afoul of the Church hierarchy.

Actually, Father Ray is like most small-screen clerics: he adheres to the liberal holy trinity of diversity, sensitivity, and tolerance, and is mighty selective about just which icons he'll smash. In fact, his iconoclasm so far seems to be limited to sexual morality. In the opening episode, Father Ray puts his urban congregation on notice that he won't be a "sexual traffic cop." The Bible, he explains, has little to say, or what it says is outdated, about abortion and homosexuality. True to his word, Father Ray advises a pregnant teenager to follow her own conscience about whether to have an abortion. (Would television glorify a priest who told a teenaged girl to follow her own conscience about whether to smoke cigarettes? Probably not.)

But Father Ray's "non-judgmental" approach to life has the critics cooing. "The small screen at its best," gushed the Washington Post. The New York Times hailed Nothing Sacred for the "thoughtfulness of its writing" and its "ambiguity."

The critical acclaim shouldn't surprise. Priests aren't ready for prime time unless they're "pro-choice" -- or otherwise mock whichever religious teachings affront liberal sensibilities. As William Donahue of the Catholic League for Religion and Civil Rights notes, "The more dissenting the Catholic, the more reasonable they're portrayed. The more Orthodox, the more Neanderthal."

But it doesn't always work among the actual viewers. In response to a boycott organized by the League, 18 sponsors have withdrawn ads from Nothing Sacred. And the show has proved a ratings flop, finishing 54th out of 119 programs its first week, and 92nd out of 116 the second week.

Will this finally get the networks' attention? In a country where 90 per cent of the people say they believe in God and more than 50 per cent attend church or synagogue regularly, religion is accorded scant attention on prime time. Last year, according to the Media Research Center, religion -- counting everything from a joke to a plot line -- figured in just 486 shows out of some 1,800 prime-time hours on the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, UPN, and WB). The Center concluded that "Prime time has too often presented distorted, unfair views of both clergy and laity."

There are, of course, exceptions. In one moving Homicide show, the hard-nosed detective played by Richard Belzer is seen praying to God. More often, though, the small screen gives the impression that devout believers are rather more likely than other people to be outright criminals. NBC's Law and Order last season featured a slew of religious psychos -- including a theology student who kills three people while under the impression that he's a Biblical warrior.

A similar ignorance and willingness to downplay or ignore serious religious devotion informs news coverage. In the last four years, according to the Media Research Center, only 955 of 72,000 evening news stories were devoted to religion. And network news continues to overlook the obvious religious dimension of certain stories -- even when it is literally shouted at them.

When heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield was interviewed live after being bitten by Mike Tyson, Holyfield repeatedly praised Jesus and suggested that his faith helped keep him calm during Tyson's barbaric attack. But the subsequent, and otherwise exhaustive, news coverage virtually ignored Holyfield's repeated and explicit religious pronouncements. You don't need a particularly vivid imagination to conjure up the ruckus that would have ensued if Tyson had said God made him do it.

After repeatedly ignoring the persecution of Christians abroad, network news gave prominent play to a State Department report this summer detailing abuses in China and elsewhere. But after a straightforward story on the matter from a CBS correspondent, Dan Rather offered a curious addendum.

Although known for his high-profile confrontations, Rather tamely parroted the Chinese line on the persecution, saying, "A very high-ranking Chinese government official" recently told him that the "stories are untrue. We do, as you do, have some trouble with cults and we, like you, deal with them accordingly, but that's all."

Nevertheless, there are some bright spots in television's treatment of religion. At the prodding of World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings, who labored to overcome the strenuous objections of jittery colleagues, Peggy Wehmeyer became the first network religion correspondent in 1994.

Mrs. Wehmeyer, a "moderate evangelical," is an oddity to many in the news business. "People assume I can't be objective because I'm a Christian." The subjects of her stories have ranged from Christian Capitalists and a spiritual revival among Jews to Hollywood and television. She emphasizes that she's grateful for ABC and their commitment to religious news coverage -- a commitment underscored when ABC signed her to another three-year contract this spring.

In addition, Good Morning America now offers regular religion commentators known as the "God Squad." Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman are the first clergymen on network television in some forty years -- and a far cry from the pseudo-iconoclasts among television's fictional men of the cloth.

Monsignor Hartman has indirectly indicated approval for the Catholic bishop who last year decreed that members of his diocese would effectively be excommunicated if they belonged to any of a number of organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, whose activities contravene Church teachings. Rabbi Gellman, a Milwaukee-born Reform Jew, explains that "several people on ABC went way out on a limb" to bring the God Squad on the air and complains that the media generally suffer from an anti-religious bias. He's determined to show viewers and the media elite that religion isn't scary.

Gellman has his work cut out for him. Just ask Martha Williamson. This born-again Christian had to fight tooth and nail to get her show, Touched by an Angel, on the air. Panned by critics, Touched by an Angel soon achieved immense popularity. With some twenty million viewers weekly -- last season it ranked among television's top three programs -- it now airs in a coveted Sunday-night time slot. It stars blues singer Della Reese and Irish-brogued Roma Downey as two angels who show up just when people most need them and God. In one episode Miss Downey offers a woman who had sold her baby for drug money a chance for redemption, telling her, "God [will] forgive you even if you can't. His mercies are brand new every morning."

The show has, according to Mrs. Williamson, "thrived as a drama that explores moral and spiritual choices, taking a definite and unapologetic point of view: God exists, God loves you, God wants to be part of your life."

Meanwhile, in the face of criticism from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, ABC insists that Nothing Sacred simply portrays the "human" side of priests. But according to critics, executive producer David Manson has been less than forthright in his defense of the show. Manson told the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press that the pilot program was reviewed by the "L.A. Roman Catholic Diocese." True, but Father Gregory Coiro, director of media relations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, gave the pilot a negative review.

In Glued to the Set (Free Press, 1997), Steven Stark notes that commercial television is "ruthlessly secular. Its emphasis is on the immediate, the here and now." Orthodox religion, says Stark, is antithetical to "television's very notion of itself."

Sadly, despite the God Squad and Touched by an Angel and Peggy Wehmeyer, it is hard to disagree with Stark. The non-judgmental Father Ray will do his best to ensure that nothing really is sacred on the small screen.