Flawed Portrait of Religious Leaders Hurts - Helpfully

Gerald L. Zelizer

Two contrasting prototypes of religious leadership stand front and center as 1998 ends. One model comes from the cinema with the release of the film Prince of Egypt, depicting in adult animation the life of Moses. The other is prompted by the celebration of Christmas and the birth of the Christian Prince of Peace.

Both invite us to think not solely theologically, but also metaphorically and practically about religious leadership in contemporary America.

The biblical Moses is depicted as quintessentially human. He begins his "princeship" of Egypt with acts of homicide, grudgingly accepts leadership of the Jews, performs miracles, which Egyptian magicians initially mimic, and stammers when presenting his case to the pharaoh.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, brings his message with clear and unwavering authority. He easily carries out miracles, and the Gospel account of his days is embellished with an aura of the divine.

The burial place of Moses is unknown. The tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem is venerated. The Prince of Egypt is more human than godlike. The Prince of Peace is more godlike than human.

As God's messenger who is but flesh and blood, the clergyperson, too, combines the godly and the human.

Popular culture shapes the image of clergy as it portrays them in television, cinema and theater. At one time, the image was that of an avuncular and pleasing Rev. Robert Alden in the TV series Little House on the Prairie. He preached, consoled, advised, rarely offended and never transgressed. In cinema, the public saw a Mother Superior in The Bells of St. Mary, who, with absolute religious discipline and dedication, coached slum kids in pugilism.

Today though, the media, especially TV, are more prone to depict the human side of clergy, warts and all. On the television program 7th Heaven, we witness the complications that a preacher's calling can bring to his family. A recent episode of Ally McBeal had its star defending and obtaining reinstatement for a nun fired by the church because of a sexual tryst.

The episode was assailed by the Catholic League's William Donahue who charged, "the bigots are at work again." Presumably, they were first at work in an earlier segment of Ally that contained what the league described as "a cheap shot about priest pedophilia."

Last season, the league excoriated the series Nothing Sacred because its priest protagonist sympathized with women contemplating abortion instead of invoking theological strictures, and he was more comfortable in blue jeans than robes.

Then there's the recent Broadway play Getting and Spending. Its subject was moral redemption in an age of corporate greed. It included two monks who, in spite of vows of poverty and celibacy, speak worldly lines such as, "The market closed down 47," and while ogling a shapely woman observe, "Wow, what a babe."

Someone asked me whether I'd be offended if the characters who had been morally disrobed so disrespectfully were rabbis, and not priests and nuns, or if a Jewish ritual such as religious circumcision were parodied on television.

Both examples have occurred. In a Seinfeld episode, a rabbi who counseled Elaine could not keep confidences; he blabbed about her problem on a cable TV show. In another installment, a ritual circumcision was treated with levity.

When some of my colleagues objected to these defamatory images, my counsel was, "Lighten up. Satire is satire. And even if the episodes are exaggerated and sensationalist, they should prod us all to cap our human foibles with some godlike absolutes."

Moving from satire to the real world, Pope John Paul's most recent encyclical was intended to remind priests that the study of philosophy and logic, resulting in transcendent principles of truth, is as integral to the charge of Catholic clergy as is their ministry to the human world, with all its fluidity and relativism.

As a teen-ager growing up in the Midwest, my decision to become a rabbi stirred bewilderment among my friends. Suddenly regarding their fraternity buddy as representative of God and tradition, hard as they tried, they no longer saw me as "one of the guys." Popular culture has returned me to being one of the guys. It has moved the image of the clergy from geek to chic by portraying, even to the extreme, the human side of the person who stands in the pulpit.

In America, there are serious pockets of defamation against both Catholics and Jews, their sacred symbols and their religious representatives. But not every parody and satire should be evaluated as defamation.

Some popular portrayals, even if they do not reflect the whole, do show a slice of reality. They are reminders that should nudge both the clergy and their institutions to correct that which can be corrected and to return to a more transcendent and ultimately more godlike model.