{"id":288535,"date":"2018-07-08T08:09:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T12:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=288535"},"modified":"2018-07-08T08:09:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T12:09:05","slug":"the-radical-kindness-of-mr-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2018\/07\/the-radical-kindness-of-mr-rogers\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘radical kindness’ of Mr. Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

David Brooks in The New York Times<\/a> <\/strong>writes about the superlative new documentary \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?\u201d\u2014and keys in on Fred Rogers\u2019 unabashed Christian message of hope and love:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing obviously moving here, and yet the audience is moved: sniffling, wiping the moisture from their cheeks. The power is in Rogers\u2019s radical kindness at a time when public kindness is scarce. It\u2019s as if the pressure of living in a time such as ours gets released in that theater as we\u2019re reminded that, oh yes, that\u2019s how people can be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n
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Moral elevation gains strength when it is scarce.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Deacon Greg Kandra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But there\u2019s also something more radical going on. Mister Rogers was a lifelong Republican and an ordained Presbyterian minister. His show was an expression of the mainline Protestantism that was once the dominating morality in American life.<\/p>\n

Once, as Tom Junod described in a\u00a0profile<\/a>\u00a0for Esquire, Rogers met a 14-year-old boy whose cerebral palsy left him sometimes unable to walk or talk. Rogers asked the boy to pray for him.<\/p>\n

The boy was thunderstruck. He had been the object of prayers many times, but nobody had asked him to pray for another. He said he would try since Mister Rogers must be close to God and if Mister Rogers liked him he must be O.K.<\/p>\n

Junod complimented Rogers on cleverly boosting the boy\u2019s self-esteem, but Rogers didn\u2019t look at the situation that way at all: \u201cOh, heavens no, Tom! I didn\u2019t ask him for his prayers for\u00a0him<\/em>; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his\u00a0intercession<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

nd here is the radicalism that infused that show: that the child is closer to God than the adult; that the sick are closer than the healthy; that the poor are closer than the rich and the marginalized closer than the celebrated.<\/p>\n

Rogers often comforted children on the show and taught them in simple terms, but the documentary shows how he did so with a profound respect for the dignity of each child that almost rises to veneration. You see his visceral disgust for shows that don\u2019t show respect \u2014 that dump slime on children, that try to entertain them with manic violence.<\/p>\n

In the gospel of Fred Rogers, children are our superiors in the way they trust each person they meet, the way they lack guile, the way a child can admit simple vulnerability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read on.<\/strong><\/a> And see the movie. It\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brooks in The New York Times writes about the superlative new documentary \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?\u201d\u2014and keys in on Fred Rogers\u2019 unabashed Christian message of hope and love: There\u2019s nothing obviously moving here, and yet the audience is moved: sniffling, wiping the moisture from their cheeks. The power is in Rogers\u2019s radical kindness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":288538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[11184,11917],"class_list":["post-288535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-movies","tag-mr-rogers"],"yoast_head":"\nThe 'radical kindness' of Mr. Rogers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"David Brooks in The New York Times writes about the superlative new documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"\u2014and keys in on Fred Rogers' unabashed\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2018\/07\/the-radical-kindness-of-mr-rogers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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