Jesus in Jersey

The gangsters on The Sopranos are rarely nice to anyone; from mothers to cousins to business associates and acquaintances of all stripes, cruelty and abuse are a fact of life for its characters. The writers of the show seem to take the same attitude, and no societal group goes unscathed.

Christians have been no exception. The show has given us plenty of less than perfect Catholics—from lustful priests to suburban housewives who treat the church like a country club and even big Tony himself, who thinks of his Catholicism like he thought of his mother: a necessity to be (mostly) upheld for the sake of tradition and some vague sense of Being Good. On this show, no one is safe from the humiliation and confusion of human folly.

But other than the catchphrase uttering narcoleptic dimwit whom Janice dragged through family dinners during her season three dabble with evangelicalism, we haven’t seen much in the way of Protestants. During the fourth episode of the current season, the narcoleptic returned, bringing with him the Jesus-praising evangelical minister, “Pastor Bob.” And thus we get our first taste of what David Chase and Co. think about evangelicals.

Not surprisingly, it isn’t kind. The show is too smart to make Bob purely a blithering caricature (though the sleepyhead is pretty close), but one gets the sense that the writers have nothing but contempt for that type. They’ve whittled the evangelical persona down to its most slimy, unbearable traits—an insistence on dropping goofy catchphrases into every bit of conversation; small-minded rebukes of evolution and science; a tendency toward blatant, stupidly simple politicization of everything; and, perhaps worst, an inability to drop the enlightened spiritual mumbo-jumbo and simply care for a person.

I’m not saying this type of evangelical doesn’t exist—unfortunately, there are some folks like this out there—but these clueless, ugly soul-warriors are in the minority. Most would’ve looked at Tony and (had they not been scared) simply tried to comfort him. The days of salesman-like conversions—walking up to a near stranger and saying “Let me tell you about Jesus”—are, thankfully, coming to an end in most contemporary churches. If the creators had wanted to make the scenes more interesting, they could’ve done what they’ve done so often before and made the character decent in spite of his Christianity. But instead we got a red-state cliché, a simpleton sputtering non-sequiturs in the name of Jesus.

Other characters on the show may be miserable, despicable goons, but I can’t think of any that have been so callously, stupidly inhuman. Gangsters and villains abound on this show. Most are thieves, many are murderers, but nearly every one is made sympathetic. But bring on a Christian whose only mission is to help others understand what he believes is truth, and he's portrayed as a shallow, unpleasant, Bible-pushing goon—a wiseguy for God. Loathsome, murdering gangsters? Even those brutes have a tender, human side. But evangelical Christians? Now those folks are scary.