The Screen as Sacred Ground
This excerpt is part five of our summer series, How Shall We Live in the Digital Age?—a collection of short pieces and excerpts from the June 2025 Ex Fonte, exploring how Christians can and should navigate the ever-changing digital landscape.
Wendy Murray
Years ago I wrote a feature cover story about Fred “Mister” Rogers because, having been ordained (by the PCUSA) as “an evangelist to work with children and families through the mass media,” I wanted to understand the theological underpinnings of his children’s program.
Fred undertook his mission to children for over four decades (1962–2002) while countless viewers, onlookers, reviewers, and social critics understood, if vaguely, that there was something fundamental his work touched upon. They could see it with their own eyes, perhaps, as their children sat transfixed before the television during those half-hour Neighborhood visits. If they couldn’t perceive the particulars of it, within their souls they understood that this simple man was rocking the world—at least, the world of children. “Television is a fabulous media,” Fred told me. “I would not have devoted all of my professional life to it if I hadn’t believed that.”
The irony and tragedy of our times is that the electronic medium Fred Rogers harnessed and sanctified has increasingly and exponentially become an implement of destruction of children’s—and human—souls. Countless studies and surveys tell that sad tale.[1] While some have argued that engagement with electronic media provides a level of connection for young people, general consensus affirms that the overriding effect of electronic media on children (and adults) has been alarming. Cyber bullying, porn addiction, internet addiction, loss of concentration, and negative self-esteem have carried disastrous effects on the developmental and spiritual health of young people.
The Sacred Possibilities of Electronic Media
Fred Rogers appeared on the scene as a prescient figure who understood the hopeful possibilities of the rising tide of electronic media while not ignoring its potential hazards. In 1969, before a Senate subcommittee hearing, he testified passionately about the importance of public funding for small broadcasters who carry positive messaging: “I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing. For 15 years I have tried . . . to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care. That is what I give every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, ‘You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you.’” His uplifting optimism worked invisibly, almost imperceptibly—like leaven in the dough—in the combat against the pathologies of a larger culture that was unraveling on many fronts.
During the years of Fred’s work, American life was experiencing social and political upheaval—a cultural reckoning marked by civil unrest, racial and gender divides, poverty, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and rising mental health issues. Many of these themes encroached upon the world of his television friends, especially issues related to the breakdown of the family. Fred understood this. “I wish I knew how every media outlet could take an assignment . . . to do our best to make goodness attractive and to better point to all the riches of our society,” he told me. “We’re so caught up in glorifying the opposite. I think the Accuser[2] would have us be so despairing that we wouldn’t do anything. But you know the effect in great darkness of one little candlelight. That sounds very simplistic, but it is true.”
Fred’s single half-hour visits—comprised of repetitive gestures like opening the same door day after day, hanging up the same jacket, pulling on the same cardigan sweater, slipping on the same sneakers, all while singing the same song—strangely transported his television neighbors to a place of magic and safety and longing and anticipation and calm and trust and curiosity and hopefulness. I’ve heard people mock Mister Rogers for the oddness of it all. Yet, over time, none could deny the transformative force that overthrew their otherwise anxious or rowdy or belligerent children who, during that brief half hour, laid down their arms and found peace in the comforting repetitive rituals that Neighborhood visits promised. In time, even the most jaded skeptics had to shut their mouths. His program lent children a corner of their minds that enabled them to believe in a world that was reliable and hope-filled. As he said to me, “The Holy Spirit translates our best efforts into what needs to be communicated to the person in need. The longer I live, the more I know it is true.”
Fred died only a few years after my visit. Before he passed, he had written me a letter telling me that after receiving his copy of the article, as he read it, he had “completely forgotten about our production meeting [being] so engrossed in your artistry . . .” Rather, I believe, Fred forgot about his production meeting not because of artistry on my part, but because he had been briefly transported into the magical world he himself had created. He missed his meeting because that story had tapped the epicenter of his vision, a vision that carried him away to that good and hope-filled place that shone a bright light, like the power of one small candle amid great darkness. It is a vision that carries a transcendent legacy still, an echo he would bid us to hear again, especially now.
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