I have an ongoing game with a particular friend of mine.  This friend is from my former life in academia, and she is pursuing a career in that line of work.  The rules of the game are simple: she gets a point every time an academic is portrayed in a horribly stereotypical manner in popular culture, and I get a point every time a clergy person is depicted in a horribly stereotypical manner.

For example, my friend totally got a point for Dustin Hoffman’s character in Stranger Than Fiction: a coffee-swilling English prof clearly enamored of his own voice.  I think I may have gotten double points for the movie Doubt.  Not only does the film play on our society’s worst fears about priests and their relationship with vulnerable children, but it also depicts them as petty and self-centered:

This little game with my friend has actually made me really aware of how religious folks—particularly the clergy—are depicted in popular entertainment.  For example, we are all too familiar with the image of the malicious, dangerous man (or woman) of the cloth, mostly thanks to Dan Brown and movies like Doubt.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the bumbling, ineffectual cleric—the one who does not deserve to be taken seriously at all.  We might think of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice, or the comical clergyman caricature Rowan Atkinson has mastered so well:

This has led me to the question—what type of religious figure is deemed “acceptable” by our mainstream culture?  It strikes me that most of the good and decent religious role models in the media are people who embrace an abstract, depersonalized view of God.   The perfect example of this is Geraldine Granger in The Vicar of Dibley.  Now, don’t get me wrong—I love the Vicar!  I think she shows a fun and irreverent side of the religious life that we all need to embrace from time to time.  But, all the same, we never really get to see Geraldine wrestling with God.  We never get the sense that Geraldine views God as a being who engages with her on a personal level.

I wonder if the reason so many people have embraced a figure like the Vicar of Dibley (why she is an example of the “acceptable” person of faith) is that she represents a very safe, non-threatening version of the religious life.  A life that doesn’t make any real demands on us.

As much as I love the Vicar, I don’t really think she is a better role model for us as we go about our Christian pilgrimage than the caricatured stereotypes we’ve seen elsewhere.  Because the fact is—if we take it seriously—the religious life is far more challenging, frustrating, and demanding than anything we see in the movies.  But it is also far more rewarding.