Terry Mattingly is our resident Mister Rogers expert here at GetReligion.
Most recently, he posted — and talked — about the spiritual implications of the late Presbyterian pastor’s “neighborhood.” All the discussion is, of course, tied to Friday’s opening of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.
In tmatt’s recent post, he lamented a New York Times feature that “dug deep into the personality and career of Hanks and his take on Rogers — while avoiding key facts about faith and beliefs.”
Which leads me to today’s post on a lovely Associated Press story that incorporates Rogers’ faith at various points throughout the piece — including the headline, which declares:
Across Mister Rogers’ actual neighborhoods, his faith echoes
So yes, Rogers’ religion definitely figures in this retrospective profile — even if AP’s story by veteran journalist Ted Anthony doesn’t focus entirely on that angle.
Right from the top, the writing is lively and colorful:
PITTSBURGH (AP) — His TV neighborhood, was, of course, a realm of make believe — a child’s-eye view of community summoned into being by an oddly understanding adult, cobbled together from a patchwork of stage sets, model houses and pure, unsullied love.
Visiting it each day, with Mister Rogers as guide, you’d learn certain lessons: Believe you’re special. Regulate your emotions. Have a sense of yourself. Be kind.
And one more. It was always there, always implied: Respect and understand the people and places around you so you can become a contributing, productive member of YOUR neighborhood.
Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring is global now, and the Tom Hanks movie premiering this week only amplifies his ideals. But at home, in Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers moved through real neighborhoods — the landscape of his life, the places he visited to show children what daily life meant.
Did you catch that? “Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring …”
In his post, tmatt noted:
But let’s return to the key word in the Rogers universe — “neighbor.”
Rogers was, of course, alluding to one of the most famous parables in the New Testament (Luke 10: 25-37), the story of the Good Samaritan.
Read a little more in the AP story, and Anthony characterizes Rogers’ approach to faith this way:
In western Pennsylvania, where his actual neighbors were, the ripples he left behind reveal a strong sense of faith — not merely the religious faith that shaped his ideals but a deep, nonsectarian commitment to the impressive, imperfect, always striving patch of the world where he chose to make both his program and his home.
Later in the article, there’s this:
It was real. He was real — a non-practicing Presbyterian minister from Latrobe, 40 miles east, a town that also gave the world Arnold Palmer and Rolling Rock beer. A guy people saw around town with his wife, Joanne. Who sat in the same pew, four rows from the back, most Sundays at Sixth Presbyterian in the heart of Squirrel Hill, his off-camera neighborhood. Who swam in the Pittsburgh Athletic Association pool.
While I really enjoyed the AP story overall, I’ll acknowledge that I don’t know what I think about that description of Rogers as a “non-practicing Presbyterian minister.”
Is the idea that Rogers could be a practicing minister only if he were employed by a church? I mean, AP already referred to his “ministry of neighboring.” I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on how Presbyterians label ministers, but it seems to me that Rogers’ “ministry of neighboring” on TV could be construed as making him a “practicing” minister.
Right? Wrong? By all means, comment below and help educate me.
AP offers a couple more references to faith that I found interesting, including here:
From the middle of that, Mister Rogers, in his quiet way, elevated the people who made things — and showed children the inner workings of manufacturing in simple, never simplistic ways. It was perfect for any young audience, but particularly apt around here at that moment.
What’s more, it was grounded in what Paula Kane, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh, calls “a mid-20th-century Protestant liberalism that made itself accessible — essentially using New Testament principles to give children an ethos to live by.”
“Fred was mitigating some bad circumstances for the region — the sense people had that they weren’t in control of their lives,” Kane says. “Fred was promoting a noncompetitive ethos. I do think, in steel-era Pittsburgh, that the results of a competitive ethos were pretty evident.”
And here:
Fred Rogers, a minister whose sermons weren’t religious, offered children what was in essence a secular version of his faith: the notion that our community was our hallowed ground, and that, as we grew, it would be up to us to turn to our neighbors now and then and say, “Peace be with you.”
Celebrity always sat a bit uneasily upon his head. Now, perhaps it is instructive to point out that he was not merely a cardigan. Or a statue, impressive as it may be. Or even a Tom Hanks movie.
For Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers’ work and life and faith offered a message: If this was his chosen community — his safe place to live and move and play and sing — then there was always the possibility for something good here. And perhaps, with honest conversations, it could be that for everyone.
Kudos to AP for a story not afraid to explore the faith of Mister Rogers.
By all means, read it all and let me know what you think. That includes you, tmatt. Tell me what I missed.