Wednesday, March 20, 2024

It is March 20th, 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today, I am venturing back to a life I profiled, in brief, on the first year of this show (when the show was quite different, I was still getting my feet under me and to all of you who kept listening or came back to see if it was better: thanks).  I admit that this person is one of my favorite characters in American cultural history, both as a subject and as a subjective matter, as there are few people I have never met who affected me and my own personal development from a young age. I’ll suggest that he is the most famous Presbyterian minister of the 20th century, and you would be forgiven if you forgot or never knew he was one. He was Fred McFeeley Rogers, who was born on this, the 20th of March in 1928 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. When he was born, the doctor told his mother that she should not risk having another; Fred would be an only child until his parents adopted a girl, Nancy Elaine (or Laney), when Fred was 11.

Born on the cusp of the Great Depression, his parents were not affected by the crash- they both came from very wealthy families, and this put young Fred at odds with many of his schoolmates. With news of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, Fred’s parents insisted that he was taken to school by a chauffeur and driven home at lunch to eat a meal prepared by the family cook. This isolation led both to his own keen interest in his inner life and to him being bullied. His parents were loving, if not overprotective. His father was known for his generosity in town, and his mother led an organization out of their church, in conjunction with other churches, to find out who in town was struggling and to take up offerings (sometimes just from the Rogers themselves).

Fred made these intentions known of becoming a minister from an early age. He would attend Dartmouth only to transfer after two years (the raucous college life was not for him) to the Conservatory of Music at Rollins College in Florida. He would graduate in 1951 and marry Joanne, the two would have two sons and be together until Fred’s death in 2003.

He had been both fascinated with and horrified by the nascent medium of television. He thought it could be used for good, not just for mindless entertainment or straight religious programming. According to one of his biographers, he had come to be fascinated “in religion, in becoming a minister, in music composition, in playing the piano, in children and education—and, now, in television production.”

He would postpone seminary, to the chagrin of his parents, but his father used his business connections to get him a job interning at NBC, where Fred’s musical abilities made him useful for creating incidental music and origin on musical productions. He parlayed this into work at his local Pittsburgh station WQED, a new public broadcast station where he created “The Children’s Corner,” an instant hit that launched Fred’s career behind the scenes as program manager for the station. He would enroll at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as a part time student, graduating in 1963 Magna Cum Laude. He would occasionally preach at Pittsburgh’s Sixth Presbyterian Church but was uncomfortable in the pulpit. The local presbytery had no idea what to do with Rogers but did not see television as an appropriate avenue. A local friend and minister went to bat for Fred and convinced the presbytery that “Fred’s “pulpit would not be so much the traditional piece of oak wood up in front of a group of pews there, but in front of a camera, a TV camera, that red eye that you see in the studio on those two or three cameras that are being moved around. . . . I was telling him, and trying to tell the church, too, that this was Fred’s very unique form of serving God.”

The strengths and accolades of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood are well known- at one point, the most popular television show on public television he refused to monetize by selling toys or advertising to children- this was his ministry- his daily opportunity to speak to children about who they were and how their interior lives mattered, how the world could be scary but also full of wonder and that at the heart of it all was kindness and forgiveness. He knew he could do more as an evangelist in a secular sphere and thought children needed to know they could feel, ask questions, and be worthy as image bearers of God- the rest would come in time, perhaps from his seminary classmates who took more traditional ministerial callings after seminary.

He would write over 200 songs for the show (including its theme) and produced over 1000 episodes between 1968 and 2001. I cannot recommend enough the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (top 5 all-time for me). Fred Rogers died in February of 2003 of stomach cancer; born on this day in 1928, he was 74 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary from John 12:

34 The crowd spoke up, “We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”

35 Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. 36 Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 20th of March 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by the X the Owl to my striped tiger. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who also wore a cardigan, but it was the 90s, and I suppose it was somewhat ironic- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.