Mr. Rogers and Holy Ground

First is was the excellent and acclaimed documentary called Won't You Be My Neighbor? Now it is the film drama, It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks. It is fitting that neither movie mentions Fred Rogers in the title because while he was the star of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood he was an modest man whose focus was on the children to which the show was directed.

Misterogers actually began in Canada, on the CBC, but Fred Rogers returned to the States and established the PBS show which encouraged kindness and acceptance for the better part of 40 years. While at times it seemed that the program was too low-key for a changing world --think of Sesame Street at 50-- there has been a growing appreciation of the gentler tenor, even as Rogers found ways to venture into subjects which pushed norms, including race and racism.




Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and while he never talked religion on the show he lived his faith both privately and on air. There was an episode in which Rogers and Officer Clemmons dabble their feet in a kid's pool. While it seems simple, this happened in 1969 when there was still segregation of swimming pools in some states. For me there is a sense of the story in John's gospel where Jesus scandalizes his disciples by washing their feet.



Maryann Plunkett, left, plays Joanne Rogers, right, 
on the set of TriStar Pictures’ “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood.” 
(Photo: Lacey Terrell, ©2019 CTMG, Inc. All rights reserved.)

There is an Religion New Service interview with Joanne Rogers, Fred's widow, in a recent issue of Broadview (formerly the United Church Observer.) It's all worthwhile, but I like the question she's asked about Fred and the notion of "holy ground", an allusion to Moses and the burning bush -- come to think of it, the shoes comes off there as well! 

Adelle M. Banks: You have said that your husband used to say the space between the television and the person watching it was “holy ground” Did you see his show as a form of ministry?

Joanne Rogers: Absolutely. That’s a yes. It was what he was ordained to do. That was the command from the ordination, to be ordained as an evangelist and continue his work in television and the media with families and children.

Later in the interview they discuss Fred's routines for both prayer and reading scripture which occurred early in the morning. And then:

AMB: The movie depicts your husband as someone who asked for prayer for himself. Did he ask you to pray for him? 

JR: It’s more complex than that. He would ask people who were very disabled, challenged. He would ask those people to pray for him. And, Tom Junod, who was the real journalist in the story, asked him: “Oh, are you doing that just because you want to make them feel good?” And he said, “Oh, oh, not at all. Not at all. I just feel that people who have gone through as much as they have are very close to God.”'

I've admitted before that I never watched a single episode of the show but I was moved by the documentary and I hope to see the movie. I do admire Fred Roger's lived faith and his sense of holy ground.

Did you see the doc? Will you go to the movie? Do you have thoughts about Mr. Roger's?

https://broadview.org/fred-rogers-joanne-rogers/