Barney Fife and Andy Taylor may not be Peter and Paul, but Chattanooga churches have found TV’s Mayberry disciples often touch on the same truisms as the New Testament leaders.
Local congregations increasingly are using television shows and the movie format to teach spiritual lessons.
“It’s amazing the parallels you can find to New Testament scripture,” said St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church member Bill Steverson, who led the recent study “The Gospel According to Barney,” based on the 1960s “Andy Griffith Show.” “I wondered if the scriptures I found were the ones they were reading when they wrote the (television show) script.”
Yep, & Ronnie Howard did his best work then too.
If Kendall really wanted to launch an edifying thread, he’d ask us to name our favorite comedy and our favorite drama show on television. (In fact, maybe that question did come up a while back.) My favorite comedy of all time is Andy of Mayberry. My favorite drama is the less-well-known Secret Agent.
My current favorite–well, it’s not exactly “current” because my set receives no current programs but PBS weakly and sometimes not at all–is Mad Men, which I have to wait for till the current season is over and is available thru Netflix.
One odd feature of this practice is that I see some popular shows years after they were popular. So when I ask my students, Say, have you seen this well-written comedy called Frazier? Or: I love King of the Hill! they think I’m really past it, which I am in some ways; I plead guilty. But, seriously, I think they OVERdo it with popular culture.