{"id":1843,"date":"2008-04-07T12:20:54","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T12:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html"},"modified":"2008-04-07T12:20:54","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T12:20:54","slug":"hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html","title":{"rendered":"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on ‘Men In Trees’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just recently, I wrote about how “Men In Trees<\/a>” (starring Anne Heche) has quite a few interesting “religion” plotlines going this season, including one about a Christian pastor, Eric, who loses his Elmo church congregation because he’s unmarried and in a relationship with Sara, the former town prostitute–even though they’re practicing chastity. With the support of the very same Sara–who’s letting him live in her home (chastely) while he’s out of a job and trying to build a new church–Eric is actually doing it: building a church, I mean.
\nLast week’s episode–“Get a Life<\/a>“–featured Eric’s church-building progress–quite literally, with land and wood and a hammer and nails and all that–and <\/em> has him doing the hottie-worship-band-guy thing (could they get more predictable with this one?). Turns out–if that’s actually him singing–he’s pretty good at the guitar, has a nice voice, and is wooing women and converts left and right with the Christian singer\/songwriter deal.
\nHe even has a fan club (also very funny)–they call themselves “The Pastorettes”–these women groupies bake him his favorite cookies, have a fan club website devoted to all things Pastor Eric, and chat on and on about his band appearances and soulful voice.<\/p>\n


\nThe episode finished with Pastor Eric celebrating the roof of this new church–no walls, but definitely a roof–playing with his band in the open spring air of beautiful Alaska. The Pastorettes were there in full force, but Eric only has eyes for Sara, and he sings a song he wrote for her as part of the church-building celebration. I’m curious to see where this one goes….it’s shaping up to be a pretty interesting portrayal of a Christian pastor starting a new church, maintaining a good, healthy relationship in the process, and somehow coming out ahead as a really cool guy, too. (Apparently, Eric and Sara, played by Nicholas Lea and Suleka Mathew, are dating in real life.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just recently, I wrote about how “Men In Trees” (starring Anne Heche) has quite a few interesting “religion” plotlines going this season, including one about a Christian pastor, Eric, who loses his Elmo church congregation because he’s unmarried and in a relationship with Sara, the former town prostitute–even though they’re practicing chastity. With the support…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"\nHottie Pastor and His Groupies on 'Men In Trees'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on 'Men In Trees'\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just recently, I wrote about how “Men In Trees” (starring Anne Heche) has quite a few interesting “religion” plotlines going this season, including one about a Christian pastor, Eric, who loses his Elmo church congregation because he’s unmarried and in a relationship with Sara, the former town prostitute–even though they’re practicing chastity. With the support…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-07T12:20:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on 'Men In Trees'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on 'Men In Trees'","og_description":"Just recently, I wrote about how “Men In Trees” (starring Anne Heche) has quite a few interesting “religion” plotlines going this season, including one about a Christian pastor, Eric, who loses his Elmo church congregation because he’s unmarried and in a relationship with Sara, the former town prostitute–even though they’re practicing chastity. With the support…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2008-04-07T12:20:54+00:00","author":"Donna Freitas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html","name":"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on 'Men In Trees'","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-04-07T12:20:54+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-07T12:20:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/hottie-pastor-and-groupies-on.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hottie Pastor and His Groupies on ‘Men In Trees’"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a","name":"Donna Freitas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","caption":"Donna Freitas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/dfreitas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}