It might seem that the religion industry in its many brands continues to be a powerful force in human societies. And of course in some regards it remains so here and abroad, what with most Americans being divinity worshippers, and the religious right enjoying oversized political power despite its minority status, to the degree it may be establishing a right wing Christian nationalist autocracy. But at the same time theism is in grave crisis as it suffers enormous losses in popularity in much of the world as explained in the late Ronald Inglehart’s Religion’s Sudden Decline (and https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/03/26/around-the-world-many-people-are-leaving-their-childhood-religion). Most of the first world has been highly secularized for decades. Even the United States, long thought the last bastion of popular western religion Christianity especially, is seeing the churches losing ground like a downhill ski racer, with membership down forty percent since the turn of the century to under half the population (https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx), The Southern Baptists are shrinking, those who do not believe in God were a mere few percent when Ike was president, hit near a tenth in the 2000s, and are nearly a fifth if not more these days. Also losing ground is Bible literalism down to a fifth, and creationism is slipping, while support for evolutionary science grows. Most Americans no longer think that godly religion has the solutions to today’s troubles. 

So what is going on here? 

That the mega rumor that is religion is taking it on the statistical chin is not really surprising. After all there is this thing called modernity. Like how science has removed any need for the existence of a divine creator while seriously damaging the concept – had science instead verified the existence of special creation then I would not be writing this article would I. And there is how widespread middle class prosperity has proven toxic to theism, with many folks dropping interest in attaining the speculative divine aid and comfort of gods here and beyond when they are getting their needs met here in the real world. Linked to that is the powerful secularizing force that is the corporate-consumer-industrial society that has been doing a bang up job converting folks from pious, frugal, church goers into materialistic hedonists who go into debt buying lots of stuff while spending Sundays mornings at Target rather than listening to a minister tell them about seeking the grace of Christ. 

Which brings us to a particular aspect of the corporate consumer culture that is giving popular religion a sucker punch in its vulnerable belly, an item as far as I know what not been discussed to date. And that powerful secularization force is….

Television

The TV in its various guises from the classic vacuum boob tube wired to the forest of TV antennas that used to grace most homes from the 50s to the 80s, to cable and satellite the dishes which replaced a lot of those antennas, to VCRs, DVDs, to streaming on your phone, has been doing a bang up job of belly knifing theism. And that without particularly intending to.

TV is a very, very new thing, religion goes back thousands of years. That the latter has of sudden late gone into a rapid decline after the advent of the new technology is likely not a coincidence. To see what is going on and why let’s go back in time.

Circa 1900 American Christians were in a pretty good mood. Almost all were followers of Jesus, mainly Protestant with a fair number of Catholics. It was a Christian Nationalist, very conservative and oppressive political and cultural power – promoting contraception was outlawed — that dominated via a tyranny of the majority rule that appeared unshakable. Then, to the shock of the Christoright, their domination began to slip in a major way in the Roaring Twenties, the Flapper Era in which societal mores began to undergo radical shifts from traditional norms that had been in force for millennia. The modernity driven reasons for this were multiple and too extensive to discuss here (for that see (https://americanhumanist.org/what-we-do/publications/eph/journals/volume31/paul). The amazing technology of broadcast radio got up and running in that decade and ballooned to big business in the 30s and 40s, but its psychocultural impact was limited its being audio only, it lacked the visual aspects that we vision oriented humans are so tuned into. By World War 2 the culture was markedly secularized and sexualized. We may think of those times culturally conservative, but it was far from the traditional norms in place in the previous world war, there being a popular pin-up culture that often portrayed women as soft porn, and obvious sexual innuendo was routine in even in the Hayes Code censored movies. 

Going into the seemingly staid 1950s organized religion seemed to be thriving. Gallup found that three quarters of Americans claimed to be church members, and about half that was attending services on a weekly basis. Billy Graham was holding his mega Crusades. But the latter actually showed that religion was slipping – Billy held those Crusades in order to try to return America to its Godly ways. Those draconian Comstock laws were losing their grip as Huge Hefner launched the wildly successful Playboy (which some of my relations found in my putatively Mormon grandfather’s workshop circa 1960). Hollywood was breaking down the pesky Hayes Code. And there was this new thing called Rock and Roll – Black slang for sex – that was infuriating the theoconservatives who well understood the dire cultural danger it posed. Elvis was the Pelvis and watching the old videos he knew exactly what he was doing. 

Its wide onset having been delayed by the war, commercial television got its beginnings in the late 1940s, when its scope was small and the audience largely urban. Thus the early success of the sitcom The Goldbergs that was very Jewish in terms of lifestyle but not so much religious. The number games changed with extreme rapidity as super hits starting with I Love Lucy, The Danny Thomas Show, Bonanza garnering weekly audiences of tens of millions, about half the country watching the telly on a given evening in the soaring sixties – the Big three of CBS, NBC and the lesser ABC — nearly all homes having at least one of the incredible long distance viewing devices. 

And they were toxic for theism. 

Because the programming was almost entirely religion free. 

Yes, there was some religious programming. As per Mass for Shut-Ins. Primetime Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Life is Worth Living got 10 million watchers a week of his pious homilies for a few years in competition with the top billing Milton Berle Show, with both personalities making fun jokes about the other, but then faded. Remember Insight?Probably not. It was a syndicated theoanthology local stations picked up to show they were meeting FCC rules regarding broadcast diversity for a quarter century. TV theism was a minor broadcast factor. 

Very, very, minor. Which is the point. 

There were five classic family situation comedies of the fifties going into the sixties that met all the criteria – loving and generally chipper white nuclear family living in middle class or a little higher segregated white suburban tract housing in which the kids sans infants were always a major focus of the show and the job of the father is paid little attention to if any. They were The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, and the classy Donna Reed Show. Also involving family life were I Love Lucy, Make Room for Daddy/The Danny Thomas Show, Lassie, The Andy Griffith Show-Mayberry R.F.D, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Patty Duke Show, My Three Sons, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Bewitched, The Addams Family, The Munsters, and the out of the solar system Lost in Space. Of these shows Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, Donna Reed and Andy Griffith were especially famed for delivering moral homilies to America’s children to keep them on the proper path. Remember when little Opie killed that momma bird with his sling shot and had to take care of its poor little nestlings? 

These programs shared a particular feature. They were square. Often very square. Not hip. The ones being the least former and most latter being Ozzie and Harriet (when featuring the fairly cool Ricky Nelson singing), Dick Van Dykeand The Addams Family. 

Here’s the thing. As much as these programs, the classic family sitcoms especially, are seen as promoters of the traditional, vanilla, All-American upright and uptight morals and values, and don’t rock the conventional conservative culture of those days’ boat at least too much, not one of them directly showed the parents and kids attending church on a normal basis, if at all. Mull that one over. 

Take Dennis the Menace. In the print comic the Mitchells in their Sunday best continue to frequently attend a mainline, Episcopalianish, bland, suburban, service where the ADHD Tom Sawyer style kid makes a cutely snide comment. In the TV version doing that was at best rare. The Cleavers are never shown at church, although it is referenced on rare occasion, and the boys go to Sunday school a couple of times. Of course the Robinsons would have trouble hitting the pews what with wandering among remote barren planets, but did they ever show a hint of religiosity? In “The Sermon for Today” the folks of Mayberry are bored by a discourse from the minister who goes on not about seeking divine grace from the Lord, but how people these days are just to gosh darn busy and should slow down which they and he then fail to do. In a Bonanza episode the townsfolk are seen entering a church as they set their weaponry aside — but what the hear inside is not shown 

Other TV fare of the time was the same. How often did the plucky crew of the gallant USS Enterprise go to chapel for religious services – actually there was an episode in which the “sun/son” of an alien god is mentioned in a clear reference to Jesus, how the nontheist Roddenberry let that slip in is not clear. The Twilight Zone was typically religion free. The exception being “The Obsolete Man” in which a brave dissident quotes from the Bible just before his cruel death. In the westerns church scenes were not a dime a dozen. Medical dramas are about saving lives, not what happens to any souls after failure to do so. Perry Mason was not a church goer as far as is known, nor the Kramdens and Nortons. In most programs it was sort of assumed the many if not all characters and families were Christian if not indicated so, at least by their celebrating Christmas. But how about the Petries, Rob being the fictional version of Jewish Carl Reiner, Buddy Sorrell was explicitly Jewish, and Alan Brady and probably much of the rest of the characters likely were as well. 

The Flintstones? Existing before any current theism had been established, maybe they were pagans. The Jetsons, which are set in 2062 (literally, a hundred years after the show was broadcast)? Maybe Christianity has continued to decline out of existence, it not appearing in the program. 

And there is Superman. Apparently despite his Jewish creation he was raised Christian – although how that works for an alien who should not be subject to original sin etc. is not at all clear. But he is also under the influence of the Raoism of his home planet. In the TV show this interesting awkwardness is not brought up. 

As for all those the Christmas themed TV episodes, they were all about the true spirit of the holiday, the fun, the gifts, the morality tales, family reconciliations — and is that white bearded man really Santa Claus! Not mentioned was the birth of the baby Jesus as the savior of souls. 

A Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Rushed into production with neither enough time nor money, the CBS suits did not get to preview it until it was too late to do anything about it. The Tiffany Network boys were not at all happy campers. Embarrassingly crude animation, depressing storyline and what was that jazzy music about – it was supposed to be a Xmas show for kids for Christ’s sake! – and most shocking of all, Linus quoting from the Holy Bible about the core meaning of Christianity! That sort of thing was just not done on network television, it being a big breach of network norms.  

But it is not just church going and the Christian Xmas that were largely absent. Much the same for prayer. From saying grace over the family meal to petitioning God for favors at bedtime, not a lot of it. Again the cartoon Dennis is often soliciting the great deity while in his pajamas – Hank Ketchum did a whole book on that – but on the small screen a usually burned out by the end of yet another hyperactive days feels lucky to just The Menace tucked away at long last. On Leave it to Beaver Larry does mention how the kids offer prayers for their mothers in class, we do not see him do it. 

Now how could all that be at a time when after the mega shocks of depression and war White Americana just wanted to enjoy its God ordained calm godly capitalist prosperity in the nations that God most blessed, while it was in a tense and very dangerous standoff with the Godless Bolsheviks the damn atheists, and the population was flocking to churches at a pace not seen since? 

It is not that the television crowd were carefully calculating and scheming anti-Christians chortling as they cleverly undermined popular piety, although the nonreligious atheists included were probably somewhat more numerous in show business than in the general population. And there is a major contingent of Jews in entertainment. Some in the industry were devout Christians, including the actor playing the father in Leave it to Beaver he being a theology student and lay minister – the last things the folks doing that show wanted was to drive down church attendance with a show crafted to reinforce the Godly American lifestyle. And Superman was doing all he could with his amazing powers to via vigilante tactics defend “truth, justice, and the American Way.” Those putting together to programs were well aware they could not go after theism in the slightest and not suffer harsh public rebuke and ratings calamity. Religion when brought up was typically treated respectfully at the least, criticisms put down. In one scene Opie idly says something that Aunt Bee automatically rebukes as blasphemy. Never to be seen were them there atheists, that just would not do in a Cold War theism steeped America. 

One set of TV programming did promote supernaturalism. Ironically the once immensely popular and now forgotten Bell System Science Series that taught millions of tykes including this one about the wonders and joys of science. The first four of the occasionally broadcast bunch were written and produced by the famed and devout Catholic Frank Capra who wove theism into the shows in accord with the proscience and spirituality of the modern Vatican, including via Biblical quotes. The program “Our Mr. Sun – which promoted solar power – cites “The heavens declare the glory of God” from Psalms. That was a one off thing, after Capra left the occasional series the religious stuff was dropped. 

Such scarce exceptions aside what the boob tube was all about was promoting large scale industrial-corporate-consumer-hedonistic-materialism. Unlike in religious countries such as Islamic where the clerics are involved in running the entertainment industry, the secular entities producing American TV always have been and always will be big time, profits craving corporate concerns doing everything they can to make Americans want more and more stuff via at least in part through paid mass propaganda ads crafted to get marks I mean viewers to acquire far more goods and services than anyone actually needs. Hopefully driving them into interest generating debt. Thus those nice big tract homes the TV families were dwelling in, packed with the nice things of earthly middle class American life that had been beyond reach just a few years prior — big automobiles sporting tail fins out of Detroit and insurance for same, plane flights, labor saving appliances, deodorants, detergents, classy suburbanite June Cleaver perpetually in pearls (actually worn to hide a camera unfriendly defect in her neck) — cigarettes anyone? The real world material is all important, the faith based supernatural is at best a briefly touched upon side-show that does commerce no good. 

The TV industry is not outright anti-religious, but it is in long term competition with the religious industry for consumers’ time, attention, and money (https://americanhumanist.org/what-we-do/publications/eph/journals/volume31/paul). Deeply devout Christians who tithe while avoiding alluring broadcast advertising and spend all Sunday in worshipful contemplation of their creator are not what the corporate folks must have. Better that people spend Sunday mornings at Home-Depo to improve their house for nicer living and higher property values, and the afternoon at or watching the big game — ah the ensuing cash flows. American primetime is all about making the bucks, the bigger the bucks the better, making the population pious is the business of the square clergies good luck to them. And fact is that religion does not sell at that well on the small screen. Just how many people want to watch some guy in robes go on about how the divine purposeful life is the best? And the competitive field is titled towards the secular. While the industry that is theism has lots of resources on hand, they are dwarfed by the enormous finances of secular commerce. Think about it. How many TV ads suggesting your attend a sect’s services or order a Bible are there compared to those who want you to purchase a hot product or service (if anything the first has shrunk as church resources dwindle in the face of down sliding membership and attendance). 

Particularly pertinent in the first wave of broadcast television was that the way to maximize those all-important profits was to get the best ratings in the just three way race every half hour between the networks, in the hope of garnering maximal ad revenue. That meant that every show had to try to appeal to a big an audience as it could, niche placement was not yet operative. All the more so because the extra value of youth viewership was not understood until the late 60s (had that been known at the time, then Star Trek and The Smother’s Brothers might not have been canceled so early). The competition to do so was relentless. That required offending as few viewers as possible. The less controversy the better, just pleasant secular entertainment please.  

And religion has the potential to be socially toxic, as per the societal rule that is best in ordinary conversation to not bring up that and politics lest awkward unpleasantness result. The last things the network boys wanted was awkward unpleasantness. Thus the scarcity of social commentary and issues with blacks showing up in southern Mayberry only in crowd scenes (at the insistence of Griffith), and Wally having a sociopathic friend in the form of the near juvenile delinquent Eddie Haskell (inattentive father it seems – the show also implied a lot of fatherly violence with boys fearing getting walloped, and the kids pummeling one another was shown on camera). Bonanza had socially conscious episodes (one with Marlo Thomas playing a Chinese woman with very bad makeup and accent, another addresses the Christian disdain for Mormons), as did a few Donna Reeds, and an episode of Bewitched set in old Salem. After having social issues raising script after script rejected or heavily modified Rodenberry did Star Trek set in remote space in part as a way to get around the limitations, which largely worked.

If say a family show did regularly show the characters going to church on Sundays and hearing divine homilies, that might put off Jews that were a significant portion of urban audiences. Conversely a show that was too Jewish with a lot of time spent in the synagogue could degrade the Christian audience. 

Plus the networks were operating under invaluable FCC licenses, in a nation where the Bill of Rights bans the feds from mucking around in religion. Best stay away from that can of constitutional worms by dodging the subject. Keep those ratings up with as little muss and fuss as possible. Thus the network suits cringing at the Biblical verse in a Charlie Brown Christmas when it was too late to have it pulled. 

The result of the tacit just don’t bring the gods too much up TV policy? It was immense. For evening after evening, week after week, month after month, years after year for decades, the at the time churchly American majority was by subtle and unintended but persistent example learned something. You don’t have to be a regular church goer or prayer to be a run of the mill American. 

The Ricardos, the Mertzes, the Harriets, the Cleavers, Clampetts, Addams, Stephens, Mitchells, Munsters, Flintstones, Jetsons, Petries, Kramdens, Nortons, Posts et al. were trend setters that helped normalize the habit of not going to services on a weekly basis and not say grace over dinner. Well sure, once in while perhaps, especially holidays, and weddings. But no need to show up all the time for another session of head nodding to another pious homily. After all, there is that tract housing lawn that needs mowing. Or how about a Sunday drive into the county. Do people still do Sunday drives? It was a message as relentless as it went unnoticed. 

To comprehend the impact of this pattern, imagine if instead the above programs pushed church going on a regular basis, with characters sitting in houses of worship to be taught the ways of Jesus and the urgency of his death on the cross and of seeking his forgiveness. That would have reinforced churchly habits as the normal lifestyle all should aspire to. Don’t spend Sundays doing lawnwork, that’s what Saturdays are for. And don’t take a fun trip in the car, stay at home contemplating the wonder of His Grace damn it. 

And be sure to pray to the Lord every meal and every night at bedtime. 

Ehhh, that wouldn’t have gotten the ratings at least in the minds of the TV execs.  

To add to the thesis, no TV family or regular character was fundamentalist. A clan who prayed all the time, eschewed much of the modern American lifestyle including heaven forbid the telly, took the Bible literally and thought the planet a few thousand years old, etc. A major portion of Americana simply did not exist on the small screen. Which they sort of resented except some thought the tube was the devil’s work so best Born-Agains not be on it. In any case the audience would not likely to have been large, or advertisers particularly interested in the theofanatics. It was your mild, moderate Episcopalian, Methodist, reformed Jewish grade believers that the corporations were programming for.

By spring 1966 the last of the big five classic family sitcoms were gone with the finales of Ozzie and Harriet and Donna Reed. Nothing in the same specific mold has appeared since, showing the long term commercial limitations of that vanilla genre. 

Time to look at the stats. If after the 1950s church membership and attendance surveys recorded stability, or an increase, then I would not have presented this thesis. But the reality is that church going started to slip (https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx). It did not nosedive like a Mig-21 fighter shot down by a Sidewinder missile launched from an F-4 Phantom, but the height of regular American worship was over never to be seen again. TV was not doing organized religion much if any good, it was doing it injury. In terms of cause and effect the situation has assessment problems. There simply is not much in the way of survey data in the early 1900s. Was a decrease of theism since say 1900 allowing the new television networks to let TV religiosity to go neglected? That 1950s American was still such a church going nation while the popular shows barely mentioned the popular practice indicates that it was not a decrease in societal religiosity that was causing the corporate media to shy away from the subject. Instead it was the commerce driven absence of their promotion of active theism as a cultural standard that was subtly influencing the nation in a way that the novel technology began to help shave off the reach and influence of the powerful and wealthy religious industry – about a twentieth of the economy involves matters supernaturalistic. That religion is optional opinion rather than facts based reality as is science has made it all the more vulnerable to televised denormalization. The rise of television/decline of theism connection is an item calling out for cutting edge psychosociological research. How much were the World War 2 generation – the Not So Greatest — that in the 50s and 60s was in its parenting prime getting the hint that being deeply pious was becoming a tad passé?  One can suspect that it was we Baby Boomers sitting enthralled for hours in front of the tubes that were most influenced away from cultural godliness. Interestingly, it was the mainline institutions of the sort the Mitchells attend that were suffering the most going into the 60s and beyond, that as fundamentalist creationism made something of a comeback at least in popular notice, but probably not as a portion of the population.  

Notably, professional theism paid this all little mind. I am not aware of Graham addressing the issue, if he did he did not make a big deal of it. The Catholic clergy from the Pope on down seems to have been out of the loop on this. That is not surprising. Elite clerics have a way inflated opinion of their powers of persuasion, addressing their masses in front of them or via broadcast being a big power trip. And they may actually imagine they are representing the creator They have trouble comprehending the popularity threat that is the greater power that it corporate entertainment. All the more so because the latter does not go about boosting about it.  

Those who were onto the issue were many in the conservative laity and low level clergies, many of whom either kept godless television out of their homes, or urged parishioners to do so, or at least minimize its use.  In one Mormon family I knew the mother allowed her children to sneak watch the hot babes featuring Star Trek in after school syndication. 

Then came long term disaster for organized religion. The gob smacking, mind bogglingly radical second cultural and sexual revolution of the sixties first introduced to the American masses with the Beatles on the usually by no means always stuffy The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 dramatically secularized society to the horror of the clergies, and remains with us. Square and prudish was and is out, hip and hot was and is in. While the TV raised baby boomers were most dramatically transformed by the Counter Culture, our parents were impacted as well. It was among them that the Bible dismissing divorce boom began to the furious anger of the religious right – until they showed what hypocrites they truly are by electing the only divorcee presidents, Reagan and Trump. The 60s Revolution has since been chipped away at in some respects, and gone further than imagined in others, it has not been reversed. 

The TV industry had to respond. The cancelation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was an anomaly. It was soon replaced by the yet more modish Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In featuring the super odd Tiny Tim and lots of fetching gals in bikinis, and not long after that came along Saturday Night Live first hosted by the vulgar language promoting George Carlin. In 1972 CBS cleaned out its gravel roads format with its famed rural purge that liquidated the long of tooth Clampetts clan, the nowadays cult classic Green Acres, the popular but stupefyingly vapid Mayberry R. F. D., and the actually talent laced Hee Haw. In their place were the explicitly anti-war M.A.S.H. in which womanizing, persistent sexual innuendo and occasional low grade assault and adultery were the then amusing norms in the early seasons, The Mary Tyler Moore show in which the main character had just dumped the man she had been living in sin with but not because of the last point, her best friend an apparently secular Jew, and the TV norms smashing and bashing All in the Family. Although presumably Christian heritage lovable Mary was not at all churchly, nor the Bunker’s. But M.A.S.H. did present as a main character a devout Catholic Chaplin. Albeit a pretty liberal version who few listened to. For your hot T&A there were Three’s Company and Charlies Angels – the telly became hot sexy in a way unimagined just years before. No church with that, or with The Rockford Files, Columbo, Six Million Dollar Man, Love Boat, Bob Newhart,WKRP in Cincinnati. Mork from Orc was not religious, nor it seem his female friend, her uptight father may well have been but it was not said.

By no means did the family centered sitcom go away, but now in a 70s form – The Partridge Family (no dad), One Day at a Time (same), The Brady Bunch (two families joined into one for reasons never explained), Happy Days (not like the sitcoms of the 50s other than being churchly was still not a feature). Characters sitting listening to sermons or having prayers? Nada. 

The 70s was the first decade to see the onset of black oriented prime-time programming – The Jeffersons, Moving on Up, Good Times, What’s Happening being the high ratings family situation comedy examples. Blacks have long been more religious than Whites, and this may have been reflected to a degree in these shows. An episode of The Jeffersons, for example, is about a religious crisis among a main character that ends with her keeping the faith. Even so, these were not programs steeped in regular churchly devotion. And Black religiosity has been declining in parallel with the white.  

There were then and still popular family shows of that decade that did have overt traditional religious sides to them. The Waltons. And Little House on the Prairie, which also promoted the secular libertarianism favored by mother and daughter Wilders while covering social ills in ways the theoright does not approve. These were not, however, models for contemporary Christian lifestyles, both being set well back in the American past. The more up to date Eight is Enough did not push theovalues as much.  

Actually going to church continued to edge down as the seething at where the majority culture was going religious right become increasingly political, denouncing the secular media for contributing to the decline of American theism. That was one thing they had right. But theism still not outright collapse. The Silent and World War 2 generations were not giving up their ways at a fast pace, and a major segment of baby boomers were not secular liberals. There had not been a single religious themed primetime program in the 60s and 70s. Such was limited to the ratings ghettos of syndication and cable, as per the CatholicTV, TBN and EWTN.

PBS. Not a big factor, never a large audience, does not carry American fictional product and when it does like commercial TV generally skirts the theism thing not wanting to offend the politicians, taxpayers and contributors it has relied upon. It has rerun British entertainment shows starring clerical characters (see below) and religious themed discourse — I vaguely recall right wing Catholic William F. Buckley chatting about how the theological musings of Anglican C. S. Lewis gives religion intellectual heft which it does not. What I remember far better is Carl Sagan in his Cosmos saying that scientific parsimony favors the nonexistence of a creator deity which was jaw dropping at the time – he could actually say that on TV?!!!! What next?   

Moving into the 80s the nuclear family Huxtables may have been the most church going sitcom family to date which makes sense regarding the religiosity of Blacks – that when it was no secret that Cosby was a regular at fellow sexual hedonist Hefner’s mansion. More theistic was another Black oriented sitcom, Amen, in which the lead character was a quite rare thing in American TV, a cleric. And an ambulance chasing lawyer of dubious character which probably did not help the churches slow down their accelerating decline. 

Over on the nonnuclear family Kate and Allie, the first told her concerned about the death thing child that some believed one does not die forever, others think it is like going to sleep and not waking up. Awww. That secular sort of thing could be gotten away with by then. On Rubert Murdoch’s Fox, the family sitcom norms busting Married with Children had an episode about church – the guys decide to set one up to avoid paying beer taxes. Despite nonchurch going Reagan and the religious right scoring political successes, Murder She Wrote and Miami Vice were not concerned with getting right with God. 

Primetime finally got a specifically religion themed program with Highway to Heaven on the National Broadcasting Company. That had been reluctant to break the make no big deal about theism policy, and only did so because the well-loved Jewish Michael Landon of Bonanza and Little House fame pushed them into it. The show’s ratings were as predicted not spectacular and it was cancelled as they fell after five seasons. Networks are about money, not societal issues. It did not help that HH was yet another standard issue boiler plate quality network drama with saddled with average mediocre TV productions values. 

The precedents breaking show that initiated the on-going new Golden Age of television by setting new high end cinematographic standards and is the best TV show ever I will brook no dissent, Twin Peaks, is about the Amerindian myth of the White Lodge versus the demonic Black Lodge, the latter having spawned the horrific BOB (no TV character has been scarier) via the Trinity A-bomb test as we would learn in the delayed 2017 season, Judeo-Christianity need not apply. Its inspirational spawn the X-Files was about aliens, not deities. Northern Exposure never indicated if there was a church in Cicely AK (the town it was shot in has one). Over in sitcom land the partly secular Jewish Seinfeld and Friends gangs could have not cared less about deity worship, nor had the characters on Cheers or Frasier. In family comedy land Malcom in the Middle was not pious. 

The Simpsons. The mega family sitcom may have more church going in it than does any other. Not in a way that encourages it. The minister does not come across as a big positive. Good old Ned Flanders is portrayed as a good, decent, sincere, moral and intolerant Godly man to the degree that the religious right embraces him. And he is an often socially clueless, super square, nonhip, nonsexy nerd dork that few others wish to emulate. The way cooler smart daughter is a liberal Buddhist who probably does not believe in a God. Bart at one points discovers he needs his soul, and he and Homer become Catholic in an episode, those events being comedic rather than moral tales.

What the 90s did see was the series that initiated something of a new wave of religion oriented primetimes shows, the popular Touched by an Angel. In this case CBS actually initiated the project because of a Newsweek article on the then rising popularity of angels – OK, this is show not really about that God/s thingy they must have thought. And in any case, with cable on the then rise the networks were moving more into niche programming which TA certainly was, many finding it treacly gag worthy. Then the Christoright finally got what it had really been wanting over all the decades, 7^th Heaven. It centered on a conservative Protestant minister leading his big family along the righteous path. Enjoying over a decade of decent ratings, Evangelicals have been disappointed that its hardline premise has not since been repeated. :ikely because the financial reward was marginal then and is even more so now with the continuing contraction of the theoright. Television is about hard cash, not speculative salvation. But as the TV market has split up niche space has opened up for host of theism of one sort of another positive programs even as theism contracted, many of them also not on the once big three — Joan of Arcadia, Saving Grace, The Good Place, Good Omens, Midnight Mass. Never would have seen these back in Leave it to Beaver days. 

Neither would have been the oh so slyly hot and salacious and correspondingly hip Desperate Housewives, which while not doing a whole lot to boost piety was interestingly popular in red states – sex does sell. Meanwhile Lost was sort of about mysterious and it turned out ancient forces including a vague after life of which Abrahamism was not a part of, such would have been seen as blasphemous programming much prior to the 2000s. Still making little fuss about the under the radar secular impact of TV were the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Joel Osteen who were themselves raking in the bucks via the medium.  

To be fair and balanced about it, the “secular” networks after the turn of the century swallowed hard and allowed some avowed atheists in their major shows, as per the notoriously acerbic Dr. House in House, and the not as much so Dr. Brennan in Bones. Why? Audience draw in an age of increasing niche programming. The wave of “new” atheism in the wake of 9/11 as the polls measured a swift rise of the nonreligious indicated it would be a good marketing ploy which it was. Unusual in being science oriented, The Big Bang Theory does not encourage theism, same being true of its spinoff Young Sheldon. That specific character has a creationist mom who does not come off well. 

A peculiar NBC light drama sort of tried to take an open look at the a/theo issues from both perspectives. God Friended Me posited that a young ardent atheist NYC podcaster that was the personality opposite of Dr. House in being pretty much the nicest person on the planet, was Facebook friended by “God” in a manner that looked real but he remained very skeptical. The so-so show was a major disappointment in that the many reasons for not being a supernaturalist or the opposite were never laid out – the atheist’s stated reasons were of the personal superficial sort that are easily reversed — the program’s mainplot centering on the nontheist and his appealing friend’s increasingly yawn worthy hi-tech search to uncover who the supposed spammer was with the standard yet another relation has cancer side plot thrown in. And in the end the atheist of course reconverts to theism of some vague flavor again for illogical personal reasons, it was a sell-out. 

And God Friended Me showed that atheism without being an actual corporate project continues to win the TV cultural contest despite the efforts by organized theism. There is not the slightest prayer in heaven that a show that began with a friendly atheist could have gotten even the teeniest consideration when Ike was president and churches were packed to their historical maximum. That such is now not such a big deal and is even dismissed by secularists for failing to do a good job, leaves no doubt the degree religion has lost cultural ground – to the extent that the Theoright is working to establish a Christian Nationalist autocracy to try to redominate the nation the way they used to – they know they can’t talk people into going back to their dour old fashioned, dreary ways. That there is now a bunch of religious entertainment programming is of little account because it gets a wee little segment of the viewing public, it’s a demographic side show. It’s too late for popular theism to regain the majority via persuasion, speculative supernaturalism cannot compete with real world sexy materialistic modernity. Part of that modernity has been played by the incredible ability to remotely view motion pictures with sound. A true human achievement of commerce which it turns out has been helping turn off most Americans from the square act of hitting church on Sundays for lo these many decades. A sunny Sunday afternoon at the tennis courts, anyone? 

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How about TV and its impact on theism in the rest of the west? In general, nonAmerican television is less outright corporate with the government much more deeply invested in mass programming via taxpayer funds. That is interesting in that state supported churches are also common in other prosperous nations. Which helps explain why British sitcoms and dramas are chock full of clerical characters, many holding leading roles, a number being detective procedurals as per the Father Brown popular on PBS. The shows are not all that much about religious mores as applied to the lay culture, the clerics being of entertainment value. Who doesn’t want their horrible murder to be solved by a savvy priest? Not that it does the clergy much good, theism typically collapsed in the 1900s much more rapidly in the rest of the 1^stworld than the USA.