The Theology of Television

What would you know about God if your only source of information were television?

It's a question worth asking this year, with no fewer than four new shows with theological implications. This week CBS takes its second shot at portraying God in three years with its heavily promoted "Joan of Arcadia," and next month Fox will introduce "Tru Calling" and "Wonderfalls." "Carnivale," on HBO, is the Almighty's cable debut.

From their founding to the late 1970s, America's TV networks channeled God almost exclusively through gray-haired, honey-toned men like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, whose "Life Is Worth Living" beat Milton Berle's ratings in the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale and his protégé Robert Schuller. God was an optimist, a booster who'd fit in on the motivational speaking circuit. From the appearance of "Highway to Heaven" in 1984 until last season, when "Touched By An Angel" ended its seven-year run, God was an unseen helper acting through angels who took the form of Michael Landon and Della Reese.

Nowadays, God is on more shows than ever, speaking, not so much through, but to young women. The portrait they draw says as much about Hollywood as they do about the divine. But they make their points with a verve that the earlier treatments didn't, forcing the question of divine revelation, and asserting a theology unique to television.

Some of the theological themes found on "Joan" and other current television shows that touch on religion:

God is "one of us." The best of new God shows, "Joan of Arcadia," is nothing if not bold. While cool special effects have given us tasteful glimpses of the invisible realm, "Joan" faces us with a human likeness of God, exploring what theologians call the immanence of God--the divine expressed in the world, specifically in humans. God is a fellow teenager, a cafeteria hash slinger; Joan ends up peering expectantly at any stranger who looks at her funny.

But the supernatural is only one way God manifests himself. Joan also finds God's love in her father, who comforts her when she is frightened by her visions, and her physics-whiz brother, who helps her grasp the possibility of God from the rationalist side.

God is not who or what we expect. If God wants to appear as the lunch lady, that's God's prerogative. Shows that challenge rigid or fixed ideas about God perform the same service as Theology 101--questioning the limits we put on God, and allowing God to surprise us.

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