Some of Alabama’s Sunday School teachers have “got some ’splaining to do.”
They’re asking their students to set aside their Bibles for a few minutes and laugh at Lucy, chortle at Jethro, snicker at Marsha and — coming soon — tee-hee at Homer.
“You can find God in the funniest places, and where you least expect to find him,” said Mark I. Pinsky, the author of “The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World’s Most Animated Family,” released in September by Westminster John Knox Press.
“At first, the popular program featuring a spiky-haired kid seemed to be the antithesis of ‘Leave It to Beaver,’ a program my brother Paul and I watched with our parents in our suburban home,” Pinsky writes in his book. “But the modern cartoon sitcom turned out to be family-friendly and full of faith.”
While some find “The Simpsons” the most surprising addition to the growing pantheon of sitcom-inspired Sunday School lessons, Pinsky said the animated characters’ expressions of faith are reflective of most Americans’ spirituality.
Like their real-life counterparts, the Simpsons and their neighbors, the Flanders family, participate in religious life corporately and privately. They may stumble — and sometimes falter in their practice — but they keep the faith.
“The Simpson experience with religion is much more consistent with the people on the other side of the screen in America … than anything else on commercial television,” Pinsky wrote in his book.
Such human frailties and triumphs are what make other situation comedies effective Christian teaching tools, some leaders said.
Rusty Walker, the Gulfport, Miss., creator of Bible studies using “I Love Lucy” and “The Brady Bunch,” doesn’t proclaim the programs’ actors and characters to be the embodiments of perfection.
But the Bible studies aren’t intended to be studies of the fictitious characters or the screen stars who portrayed them. Walker said he designed them simply to serve as vehicles to provoke conversation and strengthen existing church programs. “We use it as a tool, as a discussion facilitator,” he said of the studies. “I wrote it to fill a need.”
In 1998, for example, Walker said members of his congregation hoped to increase attendance in the adult Sunday School class. He didn’t find any existing curricula to his liking. But his wife, whom Walker describes as “a Lucy freak,” had hooked him and his daughters on watching the antics of the mischievous redhead.
One day, he spotted his children yukking it up over an “I Love Lucy” episode. And “D’oh!,” as Homer Simpson might say, Walker saw that while the Ricardos and the Mertzes got themselves into jams in episode after episode, they also showed a great ability to recognize their mistakes. His hope was that those qualities — combined with the series’ ability to inspire riotous laughter — could spark lively discussion within a Christian education class for people who might not even fancy themselves Sunday School types. Walker was right.
The 36-year-old construction administrator said he has since lost track of how many copies of the Lucy Bible study he has sold.
“Lucy’s everywhere,” he said, and it remains more popular than the four-lesson Brady Bible study series he wrote for youth last year.
Walker does all the work himself so that he can change the content of the lessons at any time.
For all the popularity of the studies, though, the two aren’t cornerstones of educational programming at Walker’s church. He doesn’t think they should function in that capacity at any congregation.
“This is to get new people,” he said, noting that some believers might find it easier to invite friends to a Bible study that includes “The Brady Bunch” rather than a straightforward, more traditional lesson.
Indeed, even proponents of the sitcom-based studies said church leaders must take care not to “oversecularize” church, as Larry Turner of the University of Mobile put it.
Turner, who led a Bible study that used “The Andy Griffith Show” at First Baptist Church, Chatom, said teachers should be careful not to overuse the studies.
Still, he said the class was well- attended and that the show helped spark “unbelievable” conversations.
“It was something different, but certainly relative to the context of today,” Turner said. What makes the show an effective teaching tool is that “we can see ourselves in there somewhere,” Turner said.
Joey Fann, creator of the study that uses “The Andy Griffith Show,” said he recognized the show’s capacity for Christian education during his college years when he spotted lessons of ethics and morality within each episode.
In 1998, Fann designed a Bible study for members of Twickenham Church of Christ in Huntsville — and worried whether anyone would come to the class. Since then, there’s been interest from other congregations and news media.
“I was just really shocked that people would have use for such a thing,” said Fann, who makes his lesson plans available for free on the Internet. He said he never thought of the study as “a money-making venture.”
Like Walker, Fann said he was looking for something to provide “a familiar atmosphere” to those skittish about Bible studies and help them talk about scriptural responses to contemporary issues.
Pinsky, who’s now researching a sequel to his Simpsons book (“The Gospel According to Disney: Cartoon Faith and Values”) and plans to work on a Simpsons Bible study, points to another reason for the studies’ and programs’ success in expressing and reflecting spirituality: “When people sit down to watch an animated show, they let down their guards,” said Pinsky, a senior reporter who covers religion for The Orlando Sentinel. In turn, he said, viewers may keep their minds open to this “unexpected approach.”
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