Why ‘The Waltons,’ The Classic TV Show That Just Turned 50, Wasn’t Afraid Of Religion
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.
(ANALYSIS) During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered “The Waltons” and watched all 221 episodes.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that the classic TV show about a Depression-era family in rural Virginia made its prime-time debut on Sept. 14, 1972.
That’s 50 years ago.
I started emailing myself notes about religion references in specific episodes — those with titles such as “The Sinner,” “The Sermon” and “The Baptism” — and marked the anniversary date on my calendar. Journalists are always looking for a story, don't you know?
I pitched a piece to The Associated Press. To my delight, Global Religion news director David Crary and news editor Holly Meyer let me write it.
Speaking of AP friends, Matt Curry and I worked together in the Dallas bureau from 2003 to 2005. Curry later left journalism and attended Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. He's a big fan of “The Waltons,” and his family’s experience became the lede for my feature:
The Rev. Matt Curry’s parents were children of the Great Depression, just like “The Waltons” — the beloved TV family whose prime-time series premiered 50 years ago.
When Curry was growing up on a farm in northern Texas, his carpenter father and teacher mother often argued playfully over who had a poorer childhood.
“The Depression was the seminal time of their lives — the time that was about family and survival and making it through,” said Curry, now a 59-year-old Presbyterian pastor in Owensboro, Kentucky. “My dad used to talk about how his dad would go work out of town and send $5 a week to feed and clothe the family.”
So when “The Waltons,” set in 1932 and running through World War II, debuted on CBS on Sept. 14, 1972, the Currys identified closely with the storylines.
I enjoyed interviewing two stars of “The Waltons”: Richard Thomas (John-Boy Walton) and Kami Cotler (Elizabeth Walton).
The story explores how the series delved into spiritual themes at a time when the TV networks tended to avoid them. As for the reason, Thomas points to the show’s creator, the late Earl Hamner Jr., on whose life the fictional series is based:
“The religious aspect of the show had to do with the fact that Earl Hamner was talking about a time and a place ... where those issues were very much in play,” said Thomas, now a grandfather of four. “I mean, in a small community in the mountains of Virginia in the Depression, if you don’t deal with the church aspect of things, then you don’t deal with things as they were.”
In a 1976 episode, a judge trying to persuade John-Boy, an aspiring writer, not to print an embarrassing story in the Blue Ridge Chronicle tells him: “John, you're taking yourself and your paper much too seriously. You're not representing the New York Times or even the Charlottesville Progress. You're a little county newspaper.”
“Judge Thornbury,” John-Boy responds, “I'm very well aware of the fact that I'm not in the same league with any of those newspapers in many ways, but I like to think I have something in common with them, and that's a little bit of integrity.”
A cool thing: My AP story made Wednesday’s front page of the Charlottesville Progress — about 25 miles from where Hamner grew up.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. Decline of Christianity shows no signs of stopping: “If you’re trying to predict the future religious landscape in America, according to Pew, the question is not whether Christianity will decline,” tweets this story’s author, Daniel Silliman of Christianity Today. “It’s how fast and how far.”
Fewer than half of Americans may be Christians by 2070, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana notes.
See additional coverage of the Pew report by the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner and the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas.
2. A survivor’s journey and how Southern Baptists are rethinking sexual abuse response: Valerie Swope tells her story to The Tennessean’s Liam Adams.
Christian Watts, the pastor accused, acknowledged having sex with Swope when she was 16 but denied grooming or manipulation. However, he resigned from his Tullahoma, Tennessee, church just days after the newspaper’s report.
3. Christians praise Queen Elizabeth II for spiritual leadership: As we shared last week, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette religion editor Frank E. Lockwood is in London.
His vacation became a working trip when Great Britain’s longtime monarch died.
In related coverage, the Washington Post’s Kevin Sullivan and Michelle Boorstein explore how King Charles may bring a new approach to the king’s traditional “Defender of the Faith” role.
Here at ReligionUnplugged.com, Terry Mattingly reflects on “the quiet, yet public, faith of Elizabeth II.”
BONUS: One of the week’s most talked-about — and controversial — religion stories is an in-depth investigative piece by the New York Times’ Eliza Shapiro and Brian M. Rosenthal.
“New York’s Hasidic Jewish religious schools have benefited from $1 billion in government funding in the last four years but are unaccountable to outside oversight,” Shapiro and Rosenthal conclude.
On Twitter, Rosenthal notes: “We spent over a year reporting about Hasidic schools. We want people in the Hasidic community to be able to read the story. So we translated it into a Hasidic dialect of Yiddish. It may be the first time the NYT has ever published an article in Yiddish.”
But critics accuse the Times of slanted reporting.
"The Times let a disgruntled minority speak for an entire system,” Rabbi Avi Shafran writes for Religion News Service.
More Top Reads
• The debate over Muslim college students getting secret marriages (by Emma Green, New Yorker)
• From shoeboxes to war zones: How Samaritan’s Purse became a $1 billion humanitarian aid powerhouse (by Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana, Religion News Service)
• DeSantis’ ‘full armor of God’ rhetoric reaches Republicans. But is he playing with fire? (by Ana Ceballos, Miami Herald)
• Alabama sidesteps compensation for survivor of ’63 KKK blast (by Jay Reeves, Associated Press)
• Anne Frank’s words resonate in a secret Kabul book club for girls (by Diaa Hadid, NPR)
• ‘Media nuns’ say goodbye to sweet home Chicago after more than 40 years (by Emily McFarlan Miller, RNS)
• Crisis pregnancy centers are on the defensive, but they're pushing back (by Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe)
• Fire destroys ‘a humble giant’ of Los Angeles churches (by Thomas Curwen and Rachel Uranga, Los Angeles Times)
• In the Holy Land, a place divided by religion, we discover how it is — and isn’t — like LDS Utah (by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune)
• In Kazakhstan, Pope Francis condemns ‘senseless and tragic’ Ukraine war (by Christopher White, National Catholic Reporter)
• Supreme Court says Jewish university must recognize gay student group (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)
• Biden and Kennedys: Ties of Catholicism, power and tragedy (by Matt Viser, Washington Post)
• Cruel or harmless? Pastors mixed on GOP migrant transports (by Peter Smith, AP)
• The origin of a gospel classic (by Robert Marovich, Wall Street Journal)
• Faculty, students sue Christian school over LGBTQ hiring ban (by David Crary, AP)
• United Methodist Church of the Servant disaffiliation vote was decided by only a few people (by Carla Hinton, The Oklahoman)
• Something old, something new. Something borrowed, something pew (by Susan Fletcher, Christianity Today)
• Think piece: Yeshiva University case means we’re all Jews now (by William McGurn, Wall Street Journal)
• Think piece: What happens when you ask thousands of evangelical women about sex (by Ericka Andersen, Christianity Today)
• Think piece: How the media fell for a racism sham at Brigham Young University (by Jesse Singal, Common Sense)
Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines
Marvin Olasky, the former longtime editor-in-chief of the evangelical magazine World, details his reasons for resigning in a fascinating piece for Current.
Bottom line: Olasky claims the magazine’s leaders gave up fact-based reporting to jump on a right-wing bandwagon supportive of Donald Trump.
Charging Station: In Case You Missed It
Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from ReligionUnplugged.com.
• Following RZIM’s money, and what’s going on at American Bible Society? (by Warren Cole Smith)
• 2,000 churches and Christian ministries ask Senate to oppose Respect for Marriage Act (by Kim Roberts)
• California pastor pleads guilty to exploiting $100,000 in homeless people’s SNAP benefits (by Jessica Eturralde)
• Mississippi and Illinois rank highest in nation’s religious liberty, new study shows (by Jovan Tripkovic)
• Faith sustained the world’s best athlete through years of grinding poverty (by Dr. Robert Carle)
• Is celebrity culture eroding American evangelicalism? This publishing insider says yes (by Richard Ostling)
• ‘Lifemark’ is boring and dishonest, even for a Christian film (by Joseph Holmes)
• Why the British monarchy survives against the odds (by Dr. Jenny Taylor)
• New York pregnancy center aims to provide women with a ‘real choice’ (by Myrian Garcia)
• Writer says Christian political ethics have flipped upside down (by Paul Prather)
The Final Plug
Here’s a shoutout for ReligionUnplugged.com’s own Jillian Cheney, who appeared on a recent episode of ABC’s “The Con” to talk about Jim Bakker.
Cheney wrote a piece last year on the disgraced televangelist and doomsday preacher. Check out the episode with her in it.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for ReligionUnplugged.com and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.