Mister Rogers

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Hollywood declines to ponder the work of Mister Rogers -- as a pastor

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Hollywood declines to ponder the work of Mister Rogers -- as a pastor

During a dozen years of ministry, the Rev. Ted Giese estimates that he has performed 200 funerals and made 1,000 hospital visits to the sick and the dying. He also spends many hours in theaters, working on his movie reviews featured at The Canadian Lutheran website.

Thus, Giese knew exactly what was happening in a crucial scene in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." In it, PBS legend Fred Rogers -- played by Tom Hanks -- arrives with a pie for the family of a dying father who has been struggling to heal a bitter rift with his journalist son.

Leaning over the deathbed, Mister Rogers whispers into the man's ear. Moments later, the son asks what he said and Rogers replies: "I asked him to pray for me. Anyone who's going through what he's going through must be very close to God."

Anyone who has served as a pastor, said Giese, will immediately recognize what happened in this encounter.

"That was a pastoral call," he said. "I don't usually bring an apple pie with me when I make this kind of visit, but I know what that scene is all about. I know what that feels like as a pastor. It's like you're part of the family, but you are also there to provide the kind of care that people count on pastors to provide."

This scene may have seemed strange for many moviegoers. The film makes it clear that Rogers is a deeply spiritual, even saintly man. He reads scripture and begins his day on his knees, praying -- by name -- for people he has met while doing his work.

But here's the strange part. This movie never mentions that Mister Rogers was also the Rev. Fred Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister. It never notes that Rogers went to seminary seeking the theological depth that he believed he needed to address tough issues -- life, death, disease, divorce, war, poverty, racism, loneliness -- in child-friendly words and images.

For Rogers, "neighbor" for was not a random word that, for 33 years, he inserted into television scripts. He was, show after show, making a personal statement that affirmed a kind of love demonstrated in the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan and its haunting question, "Who is my neighbor?"

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Remembering the real Mister Rogers -- as in the Rev. Fred Rogers

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Remembering the real Mister Rogers -- as in the Rev. Fred Rogers

America was divided, tense and angry in 1969, when Fred Rogers faced a U.S. Senate Subcommittee poised to grant President Richard Nixon his requests for deep budget cuts for public broadcasting.

The news was full of assassinations, riots and images from Vietnam. The pain even soaked into the gentle, calm, safe world of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

Rogers told the senators why he kept telling children they were unique and special. But he also talked about fear, anger and confusion -- because that's what children were feeling. 

Then he read the lyrics of one of his deceptively simple songs: "What do you do with the mad that you feel, when you feel so mad you could bite? When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right?" 

The song stressed that kids can make good choices: "I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. I can stop, stop, stop anytime. And what a good feeling to feel like this. And know … that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can."

The senators nixed the cuts, and the Rev. Fred Rogers -- an ordained Presbyterian minister -- continued with his complex blend of television, child development and subtle messages about faith. The Senate showdown is a pivotal moment in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?", a Focus Features documentary just released to theaters nationwide.

"The bottom line for Fred Rogers was that the faith he had in God -- Christian tradition and his own beliefs -- infused everything that he did," said the Rev. George Wirth, a friend and pastor to Rogers for two decades. "He was not a grab you by the lapels man, obviously. He was more careful, and I would say prayerful, in terms of how he discussed faith."

In the documentary, Rogers summed up his approach: "Love is at the root of everything -- all learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love, or the lack of it. And what we see and hear on the screen is part of what we become." The space created by a TV lens, between himself and a child, was "very holy ground," he said.