Mister Rogers, the iconic television host, was a Presbyterian minister—but his show touched people of all faiths.
(By Jonathan Merritt, The Atlantic). After Amy Melder became a Christian at the age of six, she set out to evangelize everyone she cared about. One of the names on the top of her list was a person whom she’d never actually met: Fred Rogers.
Amy was a frequent viewer of PBS’s “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and had formed a deep connection to the gentle host who made her feel “safe and accepted in his tiny staged living room.” So she penned Rogers a letter to “make sure he knew he was going to heaven.” Within weeks, she received a lengthy response from a man who personally answered every piece of fan mail he received.
He thanked her for the colorful drawing she sent him, which “is special because you made it for me.” And then he addressed the matter that most concerned Amy:
You told me that you have accepted Jesus as your Savior. It means a lot to me to know that. And, I appreciated the scripture verse that you sent. I am an ordained Presbyterian minister, and I want you to know that Jesus is important to me, too. I hope that God’s love and peace come through my work on MISTER ROGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD.
Fred Rogers was an ordained minister, but he was no televangelist, and he never tried to impose his beliefs on anyone. Behind the cardigans, though, was a man of deep faith. Using puppets rather than a pulpit, he preached a message of inherent worth and unconditional lovability to young viewers, encouraging them to express their emotions with honesty. The effects were darn near supernatural.
He was Protestant. But if Protestants had saints, Mister Rogers might already have been canonized.
When Rogers decided to pursue a career in television, it wasn’t fame he sought. While watching TV during seminary, he “saw people throwing pies at each others faces,” which he believed was both “demeaning behavior” and a missed opportunity. In the wake of World War II, thousands of veterans returned from battle and started families. These shell-shocked heroes risked creating a generation of emotionally stunted children. Television was a perfect vehicle for teaching kids to cope with life’s difficulties and express their feelings, but it was used mostly for mindless entertainment.
“After graduating from seminary, the Presbyterian Church didn’t know what to do with Fred,” says Amy Hollingsworth, author of The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers. “So the presbytery gave him a special commission to be an evangelist to children through the media.”
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As a student at Pittsburgh Seminary “79-83 I had the opportunity to have Fred Rogers both in class as a teacher as well as work on the show which was filmed a the time just down the road at the old 5th Ave studios of WQED. Make no mistake, Fred Rogers was by any definition of the term a religious liberal on most if not all social issues of his day. And he made that clear to any who asked.
But here is the core difference in the public work and ministry of Fred Rodgers, as opposed to the sneering, smugness, the rudeness and vulgarity of the contemporary liberals that run the PCUSA. Fred Rogers was a man of humble compassion, and not to misuse the term, a kind man, a man of spiritual and moral integrity. The man he was in public was the same man he was in private. And what he saw in children was the ability to process deep spiritual and faith truths and treated them and all as he would have wanted to be treated himself. With respect and care. He never lectured, nor thought of himself as either morally or ethically superior to those in his audience, children and adults. Again a lesson lost on the 300 or so people that run the PCUSA.