Fred Rogers commemorative stamp unveiled on March 23, 2018.
It might seem obvious that Fred Rogers was a Christian if
you know that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But if he was a
Christian, wasn’t he hiding his light under a basket (Matthew
5:14-16)? Shouldn’t he have been evangelizing his faith?
I would say that Rogers was evangelizing, implicitly
in his television show, but also personally to everyone he met. He ministered
to interviewers, including Tom Junod, Tim Madigan, and Amy Hollingsworth. He cared
for the spiritual needs of colleagues, musicians, and children and others that he
met on the street, in restaurants, and elsewhere.
In fact, I would say that Rogers modeled Christ in his
compassion for everyone he met.
The Basics
Fred McFeely Rogers was born to one of the richest families
in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928. Due to the difficulty of his birth, his
parents did not have another child until adopting Elaine (“Laney”) as Fred’s sister when
he was 11. His parents employed at various times, a chauffeur/butler, and a
cook/maid. His mother Nancy was very active in church, helping the poor in the
community, and in local philanthropy. Young Fred was “proud of his mother’s
good works, and at the earliest age he shared the family devotion to the
Presbyterian Church.” (King, p.22)
A formative experience in his early school years was being
chased by bullies yelling “Fat Freddy!” Saved by a kindly neighbor, Fred said
later that “the advice I got from the grown-ups was, ‘Just let on you don’t
care, then nobody will bother you.’” Fred never accepted the advice that
pretending not to care would work. (King, p.31) As an emotional outlet, he played piano and used puppets to work out conflict. He would put on shows for family and neighbors.
In high school, some thought of him as “a bit of a sissy”
(King, p.32), until star athlete Jim Stumbaugh vouched that Fred was “OK.” Fred
had, at his mother’s suggestion, taken Jim’s homework to him when he was
hospitalized with a football injury. They got to know each other and see the
substantial people behind the stereotypes.
Rogers started college at Dartmouth but transferred to
Rollins College in Florida to pursue a music composition degree. He was greeted
there by Joanne Byrd and friends, fitting in with the music students in a way
he didn’t at Dartmouth. Joanne and he shared a sense of humor, and they dated each
other some, but she graduated a year earlier and pursued a Master’s Degree at
Florida State.
“I went home my senior year for a vacation in Latrobe, and I
saw this new thing called television,” said Fred years later. “And I saw people
dressed in some kind of costumes, literally throwing pies in each other’s
faces. I was astounded at that.” Rogers understood the extraordinary power of
the medium, even as others saw it merely as a diversion, and he understood its
potential for education, perhaps more fully than anyone else at the time.
(King, p. 66)
Fred had planned to tell his parents that he wanted to go to
Seminary, but instead decided to move to New York city where he found a job at
NBC based on his music degree, and with the help of his father’s connections.
He was on the ground floor of the nascent medium, working hands-on as a gopher,
making connections. In 1952, Fred proposed to Joanne by letter, flying to
Florida to seal the deal. They were married that year.
In 1953, Rogers jumped at the chance to work on educational
television on the newly established Pittsburgh public television station, WQED,
40 miles from Latrobe. He soon became
program manager there.
“I was just at the right place at
the very right time,” Rogers later recalled. “I knew that the decision to leave
New York and to come to Pittsburgh and launch in this place nobody had ever
heard of was the correct one for me. It gave me a chance to use all the talents
that I had ever been given. You know, I loved children, I loved drama, I loved
music, I loved whimsy, I loved puppetry.” (King, p.92)
From 1954 to 1961, Fred Rogers and Josie Carey hosted The
Children’s Corner on WQED. In 1955, while working full-time on the show, he enrolled
part-time at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity in
1963. At first, the Pittsburgh Presbytery wanted to ordain Rogers as a minister
to follow a traditional path to a pastorship in a church. But Bill Barker,
another pastor who saw the potential of Rogers’ TV calling, told them:
Look, here’s an individual who has
his pulpit proudly in front of a TV camera. His congregation are little people
from the ages of about two or three on up to about seven or eight. And this is
a whole congregation of hundreds of thousands if not millions of kids, and this
is a man who has been authentically called by the Lord as much as any of you
guys sitting out there. (King, p. 124)
Fred and Joanne had two children: James in 1959, and John in 1961. They all moved to Toronto in the summer of 1961, staying until the summer of 1964, for Rogers to host the new MisteRogers show on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). From
late 1964 to spring of 1966, MisteRogers aired on WTAE, Pittsburgh’s commercial
ABC affiliate. From late 1966 to spring of 1967, it was on the Eastern
Educational Network (the EEN, a precursor to PBS). Finally, in 1968, Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted nationally on what would soon become PBS, airing
895 new episodes with Fred Rogers until 2001. Fred Rogers died in 2003.
Always Ministering
Rogers had left The Children’s Corner in 1961 to complete
his M.Div, then was ordained with a special television ministry. However, the
church declined to fund this endeavor, so Rogers had to find another avenue. He
did film a special episode of The Children’s Corner for the church with
co-host Josie Carey in 1960, titled “Sunday on the Children’s Corner.” This
might have been what a church-sponsored series would look like, with its more pointed
Christian messages. (Tuttle, p. 74) However, the trade-off would have been a
smaller, religious audience confined to the church versus a wider, inclusive
audience. Preaching to the choir versus subtle teaching without a religious
overtone. As it was, the former was not an option.
Television reporter Bob Faw said, “The real Mister Rogers
never preached, [never] even mentioned God [on his show]. He never had to.”
(Hollingsworth, p. xxv)
While his on-air ministry may have been more subtle, his
personal ministry was more direct. Fred Rogers had a unique capacity for
relationship, what Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod once called "a
fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy." (Madigan, p. 6) Rogers told Tom Junod “I’ve just met you, but I’m invested
in who you are and who you will be, and I can’t help it.” (Junod, Esquire,
p. 177)
Author and Rogers interviewer Tim Madigan tells Shea Tuttle:
In the first telephone call, at the
end of an hour, a fairly long time for a celebrity to be talking to a reporter,
he said to me - and it was a really amazing interview - but he said to me, “Tim,
do you know what the most important thing in my life is right now?” And I said,
“Well, Mr. Rogers, we just met. How could I possibly know that?” And he said, “Speaking
to Mr. Tim Madigan on the telephone.” ... “He embodied the sacred presence from
the moment he woke up in the morning until the time he went to sleep at night.”
(Madigan, quoted in Tuttle, p. 33)
Rogers was especially concerned with ministering to children.
For example, once while dining out with Joanne and a colleague, a little boy
appeared at the table, his head just below the tabletop at Fred’s side. Fred
looked down. “My dog died,” said the boy, simply, and in an instant Rogers was
kneeling on the floor with the boy talking about pets and death and a little
child’s struggle to understand. (King, p. 180)
Famed musician and guest on the show, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, said
of Rogers “He never talks down to kids. It’s a relationship that’s based on
love and respect, with boundaries…. I think Mister Rogers ‘gets it’ by creating
the safe place on television, to actually make sure that the unsafe feelings
that one has, well, let’s say, in exploring music or in exploring life, [are]
in context of something that is supported, that is as basic as—well, the most
precious thing, unconditional love.” (King, p. 283)
Another famous musician, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis grew up
watching Fed Rogers’ show. “He was love” says Marsalis. (The Bible says in 1John 4:8, “God is love.”) “You thought that the show was not real, you know, ‘just
a show. He’s not actually like that.’… Then when I met him… [as a guest on the
show] it was an unbelievable pleasure to see that he was exactly as he was on
the TV show. He was patient, calm, generous.” (King, p. 275)
Rogers’ appearances—predictably mobbed by fans—suffered
logistically from the amount of time he felt compelled to give each child.
(King, p. 289) This brings to mind Matthew 19:13-14, where people brought
children to Jesus so that he would lay his hands on them and pray, “and the
disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them
not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
King opens his biography of Rogers with this story:
In 1985, Rogers said he wanted no
children to be present when he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Rogers knew
that if there were children in the studio audience, he wouldn’t focus on
Winfrey’s questions, he wouldn’t pay heed to her legion of viewers, and he
wouldn’t convey the great importance of his work. The children and their needs
would come first. But he found the audience composed almost entirely of
families, mainly very young children with their mothers. Winfrey’s staff had
decided that it would be fun to have him take questions from the audience. As
soon as the children started to ask him questions directly, he seemed to get
lost in their world, slowing his responses to their pace, and even hunching in
his chair as if to insinuate himself down to their level. In the audience,
Winfrey leaned down with her microphone to ask a little blond girl if she had a
question for Mister Rogers. Instead of answering, the child broke away from her
mother, pushed past Winfrey, and ran down to the stage to hug him. As the only
adult present not stunned by this, apparently, Fred Rogers knelt to accept her
embrace. Minutes later, he was kneeling again, this time to allay a small boy’s
concerns about a miniature trolley installed on Winfrey’s stage. As the two
conferred quietly, Winfrey stood in the audience looking more than a little
lost. Seeing that the show was slipping away from her, she signaled her crew to
break to an ad. For Fred Rogers, it was always this way when he was with
children, in person or on his hugely influential program. (King, p. 1-2)
Pray without Ceasing
In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, the Apostle Paul
nears the close of his letter with the seemingly impossible advice to “pray
without ceasing.” Rather than try to summarize the various interpretations I’ve
seen and heard, I’ll just say I think it’s like keeping open the lines of
communication with God. Rogers appears to have done so.
Amy Hollingsworth, author of The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, writes about “the
importance of prayer” to Rogers. “Each morning he prayed for his family and
friends by name, still offering his gratitude for those on his list who had
passed away.” (Hollingsworth, p. 20)
Biographer King writes “Rogers’
[daily] preparation was not so much professional as it was spiritual: He would
study passages of interest from the Bible, and then he would visualize who he
would be seeing that day, so that he would be prepared to be as caring and
giving as he could be. Fred’s prayers in those early morning sessions were not
for success or accomplishment, but rather for the goodness of heart to be the
best person he could be in each of the encounters he would have that day.”
(King, p. 317)
Every day that Fred walked onto the Neighborhood
set to film episodes of the program, he prayed the same prayer: “Let some word
that is heard be yours.” (Tuttle, p. 159)
In 1992, Rogers gave the invocation
at the Boston University commencement, saying, in part:
Now, you
know prayer is asking for something, and sometimes you get a yes answer and
sometimes you get a no answer. And just like anything else you might get angry
when you get a no answer. But God respects your feelings, and God can take your
anger as well as your happiness. So, whatever you have to offer God through
prayer—it seems to me—is a great gift. Because the thing God wants most of all
is a relationship with you.
When accepting a Lifetime Achievement
Award Emmy in 1997, Rogers said at the podium, according to Tom Junod:
“All of
us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along
with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you
are…. Ten seconds of silence.” And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the
audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and
there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of
laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not
some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually
expected them to do what he asked… and so they did. One second, two seconds,
three seconds… and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara
ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a
crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and
said, “May God be with you” to all his vanquished children. (Junod, Esquire,
p. 136)
To me, that was Rogers leading them
in prayer.
When author Tim Madigan’s brother Steve
fell ill, Tim told him “Fred prays for you by name every morning. Did you know
that?” “You've got to be kidding me,” Steve said. “Mister Rogers prays for me?”
“Every morning,” Tim said. “I know he does.” “God,” Steve said, and his eyes
misted over. “That's so awesome.” (Madigan, p. 109)
Rogers is known to have had a constantly
growing list of people to pray for every morning. He also prayed at other times
and was often moved to reach out to people when he did so. If you want to be
led by the Holy Spirit, you have to keep the lines of communication open
through prayer.
Led by the Holy Spirit
What does it mean to be “led by the
Holy Spirit”? Rogers told this story:
Last week
I had this very strong urge to visit a young woman I know who is pregnant and
unmarried. I haven't seen her in a long time. Yet, here was this exceedingly
strong urge to see her. We had a good visit, a long visit. Very near the end of
our visit, she said, “Mr. Rogers, did you know this was my birthday?” I said, “No.”
She said, “I just wondered if that was the reason you stopped in.” When I left,
I was thinking God really cares about people who might seem like the outcasts
of society. Why did I stop in? If it’s mind reading, it needs to be called
inspired mind reading. (Tuttle, p. 162)
Another time, Fred had visited Neighborhood
employee Lisa Hamilton and her family when her husband had cancer and prayed with them. He did this regularly for months. On the morning her husband died, before Lisa told anyone, the doorbell
rang, and it was Fred. “I was praying,” Fred said by way of explanation, “and I
felt you needed some help.” Lisa said, “So Fred Rogers is the person who called
the funeral home. And he wept with me over Scott’s body - the only person I
remember weeping with me.” David Newell (Mister McFeely) said Fred had never
mentioned his timely appearance at Lisa’s door to the staff. But this didn't
surprise Lisa. “He did a lot quietly,” she said. “So, I feel that I am one of
probably hundreds of people with stories like that.” (Tuttle, p. 163-4)
“Miracles”
Maxwell King quotes Elaine Lynch, secretary at Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood, a group of Make-a-Wish children included a twelve-year-old
boy who was autistic:
I tried to get as much information
from the family as I could so Fred had an idea of what their problems were.
This was a mother and father, and the autistic boy was, I think, the oldest of
three. He had a sister, and he also had a younger brother, all of whom, they
claimed, had never heard him speak. He grunted— “Mmm, mmm”—what he wanted,
pointed to what he wanted. Fred, when he came out to visit with the family, had
the King and Queen puppets on his hands, and he started talking to the family,
and he finally got to the boy, who was almost as tall as Fred at that point.
The child started speaking in full sentences to the King and Queen. Well, I
don’t know whether you can imagine what the family was going through at that
point, hearing their son speak for the first time. The father started blubbering.
Rogers said nothing as himself. He stayed in character as
the voices of King Friday XIII and Queen Sara Saturday. And Lynch—who later
referred to the whole exchange as a “miracle”—rushed upstairs to get the family
their own King and Queen puppets from Rogers’s office. (King, p. 224)
In the “Hero” article, Tom Junod tells the story of a boy
with cerebral palsy who had been abused and would harm himself. Sometimes he
thought God must hate him. The boy’s mother sometimes felt that watching Mister
Rogers was the only thing that kept him alive. Mister Rogers came to visit him,
but he could not control himself:
Mister Rogers didn’t leave, though.
He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants
something from somebody…. He said, “I would like you to do something for me.
Would you do something for me?” On his computer, the boy answered yes, of
course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, “I
would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?” ... The boy was
thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever.
The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to
pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn’t know if he could do it,
he said he would, he said he’d try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers
in his prayers and doesn’t talk about wanting to die anymore, because he
figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that
must mean God likes him, too. (Junod, Esquire)
TV and Holy Ground
Shea Tuttle recounts that Fred
attended a sermon which he found terrible, but the woman next to him said that it
was exactly what she needed to hear. Rogers said:
I thought
about that for a long time, and finally, I realized that I had come in judgment
and my friend had come in need. The Holy Spirit was able to translate the words
of that feeble sermon to speak to the need of my friend.... That experience
changed my life. Ever since, I’ve been able to recognize that the space between
someone who is offering the best he can and someone who is in need is Holy
Ground. Even the space between the television set and the receiver in need (and
who isn’t in some kind of need) is Holy Ground. (Tuttle, p. 158-159)
Rogers wrote in a letter to a friend:
“What a tough job to communicate the gift of Jesus Christ to anybody. It can’t
simply be talked about, can it? Jesus himself used parables – so I guess that’s
our directive: try to show the kingdom of God through stories as much as
possible.” (Tuttle, p. 105)
Rogers told Hollingsworth, regarding
the relatively slow pace of his show, “It seems to me that our world needs more
time to wonder and to reflect about what is inside, and if we take time, we can
often go much deeper as far as our spiritual life is concerned than we can if
there’s constant distraction. And often television gives such constant
distraction—noise and fast-paced things—which doesn’t allow us to take time to
explore the deeper levels of who we are—and who we can become.” (Hollingsworth, p. 3)
Rogers’ Theology
While at Western Theological Seminary, Dr. Bill Orr’s
Systematic Theology had great effect on Fred:
Oh, we learned about epistemology
and Christology and eschatology and sanctification and justification and
existentialism, but most of all we witnessed the unfolding of the life of one
of God’s saints. Dr. Orr would be quick to remind me that we’re all saints, we
believers; nevertheless, when you see someone go out to lunch on a winter’s day
and come back without his overcoat because he had given it to a person who was
cold, you have a growing understanding of “living theologically.” When we asked
Dr. Orr about the coat, he said, “Oh, I have one other at home,” and that was
all he said about it. (Tuttle, p. 57)
In a 1976 radio broadcast Rogers produced for The
Protestant Hour, Rogers said “Christianity is a matter of being accepted as
we are. Jesus certainly wasn’t concerned about people’s stations in life or
what they looked like or whether they were perfect in behavior or feeling. How
often in the New Testament we read of Jesus’ empathy for those people who felt
their own lives to be imperfect, and the marvelous surprise and joy when they
sensed his great acceptance.” (Tuttle, p. 24)
When Hollingsworth told Rogers of an upcoming interview, he
wrote “How wonderful that you will be interviewing Cardinal Bernardin! He has
been such a hero to so many. His forgiveness of his accuser is legendary and
healing: a real reflection of Jesus. I often think of what my professor-friend
Dr. Orr used to say: ‘The only thing that evil cannot stand is forgiveness.’”
Author Tim Madigan interviewed Rogers in 1995, and they continued
corresponding by letter, email, and phone. In 1997, Madigan was contemplating divorce,
but was afraid of what Rogers’ response would be, and said so. Rogers responded
“Tim, please know that I would never forsake you, that I will never be
disappointed with you, that I would never stop loving you.” This is reminiscent
of Hebrews 13:5, “he [God] hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
Rogers continued, “As for suffering: I believe that there are fewer people than
ever who escape major suffering in this life. In fact, I’m fairly convinced
that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of ‘powerlessness.’
Join the club, we are not in control: God is.” (Madigan, p. 3) Later, Rogers
says to Madigan about grief, “With grief there is, inevitably, some time of
anger and you know, God can take our anger. I think God respects the fact that
we would share a whole gamut of feelings.” (Madigan, p. 159) If you doubt that God
wants to hear your true feelings, read through the Psalms.
Rogers said elsewhere, “Frankly, I think that after we die,
we have this wide understanding of what’s real. And we’ll probably say, ‘Ah, so
that’s what it was all about.’” (Hollingsworth, p. 147)
Was He Gay?
The short answer is “No.” No one who knew him, whether they
were straight or gay, thought he was gay. No one ever accused or suspected him
of any kind of unfaithfulness to his wife Joanne.
Rogers himself was often labeled a “sissy,” or gay, in a derogatory sense. But as associate Eliot Daley put it: “Fred is one of the strongest people I have ever met in my life. So if they are saying he’s gay because... that’s a surrogate for saying he’s weak, that’s not right, because he’s incredibly strong.” He adds: “He wasn’t a very masculine person; he wasn’t a very feminine person; he was androgynous.” (King, p. 207)
In Maxwell King’s 2018 biography of Rogers, he quotes a friend of Rogers who claims that Rogers said he had found both women and men attractive. (King, p. 208) This prompted some people to decide that Rogers was bisexual. I am not convinced that he was, and besides that second-hand quote, I’ve seen no other evidence. Rather than get derailed by the controversy, I link to a Snopes article that discusses it thoroughly and dispassionately: Was Mr. Rogers Bisexual?
Rogers himself said “I’m not John Wayne, so consequently, for some people I’m not the model for the man in the house.” (King, p. 207) Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, writes about John Wayne as a role model for some white conservative male evangelical Christians; those whose “evangelical militancy” and “warrior God” have a “Jesus more closely resembling William Wallace than either Mother Teresa or Mister Rogers.” (Du Mez, p. 174)
Did Mister Rogers Ruin Our Children?
Did Mister Rogers’ message that “There’s no person in the
whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are” spoil all those
children watching his show? Clearly, some pundits and critics thought so,
though without any evidence that I’ve seen, such as sociological investigation,
longitudinal studies, surveys, or other systematic data.
In the spring of 2010, the Fox News
Channel devoted part of its daily newscast to a segment entitled “Is Mr. Rogers
Ruining Kids?” Fox & Friends took it all the way, describing Rogers as
“this evil man” who taught kids that they are special, thereby sapping their
will to work hard in school, or to improve themselves. (King, p. 357)
Don Feder, a nationally syndicated columnist for the Boston
Herald, summed it up: “For over twenty-five years on his PBS series, Fred
Rogers has been filling the innocent heads of children with this pap…. Under a
self-esteem regime, America is becoming a nation of feel-good mediocrities.”
(King, p. 291)
These opinions might reflect more on the pundits and their
worldview, which I would not describe as Christian. Do Christian parents tell
their children that God loves them? I hope so, though apparently, some teach
them that they are dirty, rotten sinners, bound for hell.
In fact, Rogers never told children not to work hard.
Quite the opposite. We own a Mister Rogers cassette with the songs “You Have to
Learn Your Trade” and “You’ve Got to Do It.” The former says in part:
You have to learn your trade.
Everything takes practice.
When you see what you have made,
You’ll shout, “Look here, the fact is
With a fair amount of practice you can really,
Positively learn your trade.
The latter song states “make-believe pretending just won’t
do it for you. You’ve got to do it.”
Rogers told Hollingsworth: “Self-esteem doesn’t come from a
child hearing something that’s not true about him or her. If an adult does not
believe that the child has done a good job with something, well, it’s not the
least bit helpful to say so…. I would hope that you wouldn’t say ‘I’m proud of
you’ if your child has done something that might be hurtful to him or her or to
somebody else, because that just doesn’t help. I guess we’re coming right back
to the very first thing we talked about, and that’s truthfulness—you know,
being ourselves and allowing somebody to share in that.” (Hollingsworth, p. 65)
Actually, the idea of every child being special was not
the entire thrust of Rogers’ message. With a theological background, and having
studied child development at the University of Pittsburgh and the Arsenal Families
& Children Center, he was most concerned with the spiritual and emotional growth of children. He wanted to teach them positive ways of dealing with fear, anger,
pain, and doubt.
Biographer King says “Fred repeatedly emphasized personal
responsibility. The difference is that Rogers honed in on the cultivation of
self-discipline.” Rogers said, “I think of discipline as the continual everyday
process of helping a child learn self-discipline.” (King, p. 292)
Jared C. Wilson of The Gospel Coalition wrote in 2018 of Fred Rogers that “it should be clear to those who can make the connection with a Christian worldview that he was intent on treating every person he met as an image-bearer of God.” (Mister Rogers’s Deathbed Confession)
Was Mister Rogers Born Again?
Mister Rogers was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian
Church (PCUSA). It is not known as an evangelical denomination. Though I can
find no documentation of a “born again” moment, in the aforementioned story about attending a sermon, Rogers says that
“changed my life.”
This is what Jesus says to explain the phrase “Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” in John
3:3-6:
Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
In other words, it is the Holy Spirit that is born in you when
you are “born again.” When you encounter someone who was not raised in the
evangelical tradition, being “born again” might mean nothing, or it may have a
negative political connotation. In evangelical circles, your testimony of being
born again (or deciding to follow Christ) is held in high regard. When you
encounter someone who is being led by the Holy Spirit, “by their fruits ye
shall know them.” (Matthew
7:15-20) To be more specific about the “fruit” (or results) of the Spirit,
we can look at Galatians
5:22-23: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” I see all of these in Fred
Rogers.
Reverend Burr Wishart, who worked with Rogers at the
Pittsburgh Foundation, said “He [Fred] would take offense at it, but he was the
most Christlike human being I have ever encountered.” (King, p. 120)
Conclusion
I did not focus on the Christianity of Fred Rogers when my
younger sister or my children watched him. Only after seeing the two recent
movies about him did Rogers’ Christian motivation become clear. (I reviewed
those movies at Crossover Cinema,
in Kindness Makes a Comeback.)
As I asked in my overly
long writing about Martin Luther King, Jr, what do I mean by “Christian”?
Basically, that would be a follower of Christ, of Jesus’ teachings. Personally,
I look for what the Apostle Paul called the “fruit of the Spirit” mentioned
above (Galatians
5:22-23). I believe that I’ve shown here that Rogers was called by God, led
by the Holy Spirit, and always ministering; in short, a Christian. Why do I
feel a need to prove this? Because many unbelievers doubt that there are good
examples of Christians, some not realizing that some of their own heroes, such
as Fred Rogers or Martin Luther King, Jr, were Christians.
Bibliography
I had read three books about Fred Rogers, so I thought I was
ready to write this. Then I came across a fourth book with a slightly different
perspective, so I read that too. There are other books about him with
perspectives that are not pertinent to my purpose. Having four different
perspectives reminds me of the four gospel writers, each having their own
perspective.
Hollingsworth, Amy, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers,
Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2005.
Hollingsworth writes from a more religiously conservative perspective than
Tuttle. She also maintained an eight-year correspondence with Rogers in between
interviews with him.
King, Maxwell, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of
Fred Rogers, Abram Books, New York, NY, 2018.
This is the longest, most comprehensive, and most conventional biography of the
four books I read about Rogers.
Madigan, Tim, I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, Ubuntu Press, Los Angeles, 2012.
Madigan is a journalist who interviewed Rogers and whose life was changed by their ensuing friendship.
Tuttle, Shea, Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 2019.
Tuttle writes from a more religiously liberal perspective than Hollingsworth. She did not meet Rogers.
This article was the basis of the movie starring Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which appeared 20 years later.
Junod, Tom, “My Friend Mister Rogers,” The Atlantic, December 2019.
Junod discusses his friendship with Rogers after the “Hero” article appeared, and the subsequent development of the movie based on the article.
Langmann, Brady, “Mr
Rogers Changed Tom Junod’s Life. Here’s the True Story Behind A Beautiful
Day in the Neighborhood,” Esquire, November 22, 2019.
Langmann interviews Junod about keeping Fred Rogers’ message alive.
Du Mez, Kristin Kobes, Jesus and John Wayne: How White
Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Liveright, New York,
NY, 2020.
The subtitle says it all. I had this book but didn’t read it until I read
Rogers saying he wasn’t John Wayne.
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