Speaker 1: Why does it have to get dark? Why won't the
Speaker 1: day always stay? Let's say good bye to the night time,
Speaker 1: good bye, Let's send the dark time away. Some day, oh,
Speaker 1: some day I'll know what to say. Some day, oh,
Speaker 1: some day I'll not have to say? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Wonder?
Speaker 1: Why why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why why why
Speaker 1: why why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Do you
Speaker 1: ask a lot of why questions? I know I always
Speaker 1: did when I was a little I still do. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Bad stuff happens, and for a lot of us, our
Speaker 1: first response is why why is this happening to me?
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers sang songs like this one to show kids
Speaker 1: it's okay to ask the question, But in his own
Speaker 1: life and in a show, he turned why into how
Speaker 1: how to respond? How to make someone else's life better?
Speaker 1: How to be good in a world filled with bad?
Speaker 1: I'm Carvil Wallace and This is Finding Fred, a podcast
Speaker 1: about Fred Rogers from I Heart Media and Fatherly in
Speaker 1: partnership with Transmitter Media. Last episode, we talked about the
Speaker 1: famous scene in Mr Rogers Neighborhood in which Fred washes
Speaker 1: Francois Clement's feet. It was politically charged a white man
Speaker 1: sharing a swimming pool with a black man, But the
Speaker 1: scene was also a blatant recreation of a Bible story
Speaker 1: from the Gospel of John. In this story, Jesus washes
Speaker 1: the feet of his followers, the people who are supposedly
Speaker 1: less powerful, less important than himself. The moral is that
Speaker 1: great leaders are first and foremost great servants, that we
Speaker 1: can and maybe should, serve one another. But for all
Speaker 1: the biblically evocative nature of the footpath scene, which most
Speaker 1: striking is what Fred Rogers doesn't say. God Fred was
Speaker 1: an ordained Presbyterian minister, though you wouldn't even know it
Speaker 1: from watching his program, This scene with Officer Clement is
Speaker 1: about as close as he ever came to telling a
Speaker 1: Bible story in the neighborhood. Here's a question, when I
Speaker 1: say the word religion, what is your response, comfort? Or
Speaker 1: does your guard go up for me? I don't have
Speaker 1: much of a reaction to it at all. It was
Speaker 1: not forced on me in any uncomfortable way. The Bible
Speaker 1: camps and churches I went to were, in my mind,
Speaker 1: sometimes boring, sometimes interesting, but largely inconsequential. Although I was
Speaker 1: deathly afraid of Satan, and the Book of Revelations and
Speaker 1: the Second Coming. And when I thought about these things
Speaker 1: as a kid, my mouth would go dry and my
Speaker 1: stomach would feel like it was filled with hot lead,
Speaker 1: and that would lay awake in bed, just terrified. So
Speaker 1: maybe it was a big deal. What about you? Where
Speaker 1: does your response to religion live in your heart, in
Speaker 1: your brain, in the pit of your stomach. What do
Speaker 1: you think religion is for? Oh boy, that's that's a
Speaker 1: bit of a loaded question, especially in in the world
Speaker 1: we live in today. Lisa Dormeyer was an intern on Mr.
Speaker 1: Rogers neighborhood. She later attended seminary and was a chaplain
Speaker 1: of the Children's Hospital. Today she helps run a senior
Speaker 1: care facility just outside of Pittsburgh, not far from where
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers grew up. Here in western Pennsylvania, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of Scottish and German influence, and that's my ancestry,
Speaker 1: which is not very affectionate or even affirming. This was
Speaker 1: the same background Fred Rogers came from. People men especially,
Speaker 1: were stern, stolid, maybe even a little cold. And these
Speaker 1: sturdy old Scottish immigrants were Presbyterians. It's a Protestant Christian
Speaker 1: tradition that is older than the founding of this country.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were so many Presbyterians involved in writing
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence and early governance that a lot
Speaker 1: of our United States government structures are similar to the
Speaker 1: Presbyterian tradition of election and general assembly bodies that come
Speaker 1: together as as a voice. We don't have bishops, we
Speaker 1: don't have a pope. Um. Our elected leadership changes on
Speaker 1: a regular basis um. So that's kind of our structure. Theologically,
Speaker 1: we're Calvinists, and so we believe that we are unable
Speaker 1: to save ourselves. We are fully reliant on the grace
Speaker 1: of God to save us, and that to me has
Speaker 1: always been that's the gift of being a Presbyterian, is
Speaker 1: that belief that in our brokenness, God enters the world
Speaker 1: to love and claim us as we are. We're broken
Speaker 1: already and God loves us just the way we are.
Speaker 1: My mother and dad were both on boards of our church.
Speaker 1: I remember early on being very very taken with the
Speaker 1: kinds of things that the ministers were talking about. Fred
Speaker 1: sat for a four and a half hour retrospective interview,
Speaker 1: and rather than talk explicitly about his beliefs, he talked
Speaker 1: about the ways in which growing up he saw faith
Speaker 1: tangibly at work in the world, like his industrialist father's
Speaker 1: philanthropy and his mother's service work. I think she had
Speaker 1: something like twenty five thousand volunteer hours at the hospital.
Speaker 1: She loved being a narciss aid, and during the Second
Speaker 1: World War she was in charge of banking surgical dressings
Speaker 1: for the troops. And I remember as a little boy
Speaker 1: going down and seeing the people folding these gauze squares,
Speaker 1: you know, and then they would ship them off. I mean,
Speaker 1: what better metaphor for binding up the brokenness of the
Speaker 1: world than literally making gauze bandages. M Fred Rogers grew
Speaker 1: up in La Trobe, Pennsylvania, a small but active industrial
Speaker 1: town just outside of Pittsburgh, and it's heyday there were
Speaker 1: trolley cars billowing smokestacks. It's where the banana split was invented.
Speaker 1: But Fred grew up in the middle of the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: The Tropes population was mostly blue collar people working in factories,
Speaker 1: and pretty much everyone was struggling to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Pretty much everyone except the Rogers family. They came from
Speaker 1: old banking and industry money. Both of his parents were
Speaker 1: extraordinarily giving helped all hundreds and hundreds of people and
Speaker 1: families in Latrobe. They gave away a lot of their
Speaker 1: money to to other people who needed it. Maxwell King
Speaker 1: is Fred's biographer. The message he got from watching his
Speaker 1: parents was caring and being neighborly and being concerned and
Speaker 1: being considerate. They had a lot of privilege, and I
Speaker 1: think that that may be one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Fred felt like an outlier. He was very shy as
Speaker 1: a little boy. He was introverted, he was lonely. The
Speaker 1: family had a limousine drive him to elementary school every day.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that? Can you imagine you might just
Speaker 1: get teased a little bit about that. Some kids weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to come over to Fred's house because their parents
Speaker 1: worried their clothes weren't nice enough. Fred was lonely, a quiet,
Speaker 1: chubby kid who suffered from childhood asthma. He was self conscious,
Speaker 1: and he was insecure. Kids at school called him Fat Freddy.
Speaker 1: One day, his chauffeur didn't show up to drive him
Speaker 1: home from school, kids chased him down the street, you know,
Speaker 1: shouting out, We're gonna get you, Fat Freddy. And he
Speaker 1: was very traumatized by the experience, and he and he
Speaker 1: got home and he told his parents and grandparents about it,
Speaker 1: and they said to him, oh, Fred, if you just
Speaker 1: pretend you don't care, just pretend it doesn't matter to
Speaker 1: you that you don't care, then they'll leave you alone.
Speaker 1: And Fred went up to his room. This is a
Speaker 1: little boy of about ten or eleven, and sat in
Speaker 1: his room and said to himself, I do care. The
Speaker 1: stoic white people who settled in northern Appolachia, they probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have survived without advice, like, just pretend you don't care.
Speaker 1: But the problem him, for young Fred was that even
Speaker 1: though he was from these people, he was not quite
Speaker 1: of them. He was, for some reason, made of something different.
Speaker 1: He had to find ways to work through his sensitivity
Speaker 1: and loneliness. So he created puppets to play with in
Speaker 1: his room, and he used them to work through all
Speaker 1: the feelings he wasn't supposed to have. And in a
Speaker 1: sense he did pretend not to have those feelings. He
Speaker 1: gave them to his puppets. I think every one of
Speaker 1: them has a facet of me, Lady Elaine, certainly the
Speaker 1: mischief maker, the fund maker, exdals, the adolescent, all love
Speaker 1: flying around this place. I've been looking for you all anyway.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier even as an adult for me
Speaker 1: to have Daniel say I'm really scared. Do you think
Speaker 1: maybe you could keep me a huck? You know? But
Speaker 1: that would be hard for me to say, I'm really scared,
Speaker 1: do you think you can give me? When we're teens
Speaker 1: and our social lives become so much more important, we
Speaker 1: need more than make believe in puppets to make life
Speaker 1: feel manageable. Even fred did. I was very, very shy
Speaker 1: when I was in grade school, and when I got
Speaker 1: to high school, I was scared to death to go.
Speaker 1: But just so happened that in our class there was
Speaker 1: this big man on campus by the name of Jim
Speaker 1: Stumball who was on every team, and he got hurt
Speaker 1: at a football practice and I was told to take
Speaker 1: his homework to him to the hospital. Over time, a
Speaker 1: relationship began to develop between shy, quiet Freddie and Jim,
Speaker 1: the big man on campus. We started to talk and
Speaker 1: I could see what substance there was in this jock,
Speaker 1: you know, And evidently he could see what substance there
Speaker 1: was in this shy kid. So when he got out
Speaker 1: of the hospital, and went back to the school. He
Speaker 1: said to people, you know that that Roger's kids. Okay.
Speaker 1: That made all the difference in the world for me,
Speaker 1: just somebody saying to the others that Roger's kids okay.
Speaker 1: It was after that that I started writing for the newspaper,
Speaker 1: got to be president of the student council. What a
Speaker 1: difference one person can make in the life of another.
Speaker 1: H It's almost as if he said, I like you
Speaker 1: just the way you are. Did you ever have an
Speaker 1: experience like this where the kindness of just one person
Speaker 1: changed the course of your life. Being accepted and welcomed
Speaker 1: by this jock healed something inside Fred Rogers, and Fred
Speaker 1: would eventually use his television program to demonstrate what he
Speaker 1: understood to be a religious idea. We are broken and
Speaker 1: we're not really capable of fixing ourselves. But there is
Speaker 1: this God of love that transcends the brokenness and enters
Speaker 1: into our lives and our world to love us as
Speaker 1: we are, and often that love shows up through other people. Again,
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers Neighborhood was not a religious show, but Lisa
Speaker 1: dor Meyer says it was a vehicle for the love
Speaker 1: of a god that Fred Rogers deeply believed in. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people just didn't take the time
Speaker 1: to listen to what he was really saying. They thought
Speaker 1: that he was very simplistic and really didn't have depth
Speaker 1: to that message. But when you listened, when you read,
Speaker 1: there was an incredible depth and call to action in
Speaker 1: his interactions on the show. In Mr Rogers, fish Died.
Speaker 1: Take a look at the aquarium. Do you see a
Speaker 1: dead fish? You might remember he had a whole tank
Speaker 1: of them, and one of the tiny, guppy sized ones
Speaker 1: sank to the stones at the bottom and stayed there.
Speaker 1: Fred scoops it out and stares hard into the camera
Speaker 1: as we better bury it. M He solemnly wraps the
Speaker 1: fish in a yellow cloth and the place back here
Speaker 1: in the yard. The whole sequence of discovering the dead fish,
Speaker 1: trying to revive the fish, and then burying the fish
Speaker 1: runs longer than five minutes, during which Fred doesn't speak
Speaker 1: more than ten sentences I counted. The rest is silence.
Speaker 1: And finally, after all this ceremony, Mr Rogers just tells
Speaker 1: us a story. When I was very young, I had
Speaker 1: a dog that I loved very much. Her name was Mitzi.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. When she got to be old and she died.
Speaker 1: I was very sad when she died, because she and
Speaker 1: I were good pals. Mm hmmm. And when she died,
Speaker 1: I cried. My grandmother heard me crying, I remember, and
Speaker 1: she came and she just put her arm around me
Speaker 1: because she knew I was sad. She knew how much
Speaker 1: I loved that dog. And my dad said we'd we'd
Speaker 1: have to bury Metsy. And I didn't want to. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to bury her because I thought I'd just
Speaker 1: pretend that she was still alive. But my dad said
Speaker 1: that her body was dead and we'd have to bury her,
Speaker 1: so we did. By this time, Fred Rogers had used
Speaker 1: this program to talk quite frankly to four or five
Speaker 1: and six year olds about assassination and racism and war,
Speaker 1: and now he was doing a whole episode about death,
Speaker 1: about mortality, and never once does he say a thing
Speaker 1: about God, just Mizzi and a song. Why Why? Why? Why?
Speaker 1: Wonder why? He shows that it's okay and important to
Speaker 1: ask a big, unanswerable question and to keep asking it. Why.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back Why why Fred Rogers? Uh. We
Speaker 1: live in his neighborhood. In my office was right across
Speaker 1: the street, from w q e D, the public television
Speaker 1: radio station from which Mr. Rogers was broadcast. My name
Speaker 1: is Aaron Bisno, Rabbi at Rhodef Shalem Congregation, which is
Speaker 1: the largest Jewish congregation in Pittsburgh. And you have a
Speaker 1: you have a picture of Fred Rogers in your office?
Speaker 1: Is I do I do? Why? Um? Well? He is
Speaker 1: the full picture from the magazine quotas What if Heaven
Speaker 1: is the relationships we make here, and that rather than
Speaker 1: waiting for a world that we might one day inherit
Speaker 1: or merit, we have an opportunity in a few number
Speaker 1: of years, while we're with each other, to make of
Speaker 1: this world the world of which we speak and dream.
Speaker 1: Fred's own spiritual activity was rooted deeply in his Presbyterian faith,
Speaker 1: but he understood that not everyone finds God or religion
Speaker 1: to be a source of solace or sustenance. Even if
Speaker 1: people believe in some kind of greater power, that faith
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily give them answers about what to do about
Speaker 1: loneliness and fear hurt. Believing in God doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: feeling all of God's love. So the the Christian theologian C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis in a very small monograph he wrote in the
Speaker 1: year following his wife's death, called A Grief Observed. He
Speaker 1: is a line where he says, do not speak to
Speaker 1: me of the comforts of religion, or I shall know
Speaker 1: that you do not understand. We're hurting, right. And it's
Speaker 1: not that we want your theology or your pronouncements about
Speaker 1: how this is all part of God's plan or you're
Speaker 1: in God's hand, but rather I need a hug, or
Speaker 1: I need to be able to cry right now, or
Speaker 1: I need to just be silent with you and not
Speaker 1: have you demand anything of me. It's so interesting because
Speaker 1: Fred wasn't an ordained minister who in a sense saw
Speaker 1: his show as a kind of ministry, I would believe,
Speaker 1: and the television was his pulpit. Yes, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: given all that, it strikes me as particularly meaningful that
Speaker 1: he uh did not very very rarely is, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, said the word God um in his work.
Speaker 1: He's not there to edify you about religion. He's there
Speaker 1: to do this other thing, which is this kind of
Speaker 1: comfort and support, and he doesn't need to mention God
Speaker 1: in order to do that. Uh. And in fact, maybefore
Speaker 1: a lot of people mentioned God would would interfere with
Speaker 1: his ability to do that, and so I think that
Speaker 1: that's right. And Fred Rogers lets everybody know that, Hey,
Speaker 1: I like you just the way you are. You're good enough,
Speaker 1: you're wonderful, right, You're exactly who you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: There's no one in the world just like you, and
Speaker 1: the world will be a poorer place in your absence. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a really beautiful message. And we don't need to
Speaker 1: uh to muck it up, or to confuse it, or
Speaker 1: to uh uh divide ourselves one from another by overlaying
Speaker 1: it with words like like God. Fed Rogers saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity to use television as a means of reaching a
Speaker 1: pulpit from which to reach, not preach, quite more to
Speaker 1: pastor right more, to be there as as one who
Speaker 1: comforts reassures. What's that distinction between preach and pastor? As
Speaker 1: you just made it well. So often in in um
Speaker 1: describing clergy work, UM people speak of of being a preacher,
Speaker 1: a pastor, or a priest. And so preaching is what
Speaker 1: you do on a pulpit or teaching or in a
Speaker 1: classroom kind of thing, right, and pastoring is holding someone's
Speaker 1: hand and being with them. Fred Rogers chose to understand
Speaker 1: the medium and what incredible insight to do so to
Speaker 1: comfort and to reassure, and to serve as a guide
Speaker 1: and a friend who's gonna walk with you through this divorce,
Speaker 1: through this death, through this experience you're having, through the
Speaker 1: pains of growing up. Fred's program was his pulpit, not
Speaker 1: metaphorically literally. A few years after he started making children's
Speaker 1: TV programming, Fred started attending classes at what is now
Speaker 1: known as Pittsburgh Theological Seminary on his lunch breaks. Eight
Speaker 1: years later, he was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church.
Speaker 1: He received an extremely unique assignment from the body that
Speaker 1: oversees ministry. Fred was tasked quote to minister to families
Speaker 1: through the mass media. But the thing is, if you're
Speaker 1: ministering through mass media, especially public media, then you're not
Speaker 1: just ministering to your congregation. You're not just reaching Presbyterians
Speaker 1: or Christians or even believers. Anyone can be on the
Speaker 1: other side of that TV screen. Your congregation has to
Speaker 1: include every kind of person that might be in the world,
Speaker 1: and that requires a very skillful pastor. You know, I
Speaker 1: my ex wife gave me a ride to the airport
Speaker 1: for this trip, and we were talking about this on
Speaker 1: the way and she said, she said, what I remember
Speaker 1: about Fred Rodgers is that's where I learned to use chopsticks.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh really, She said yeah, and she
Speaker 1: described it and she said, you know, it was really slow,
Speaker 1: and we just sat there together and he taught me
Speaker 1: how to use chopsticks. And I thought that was such
Speaker 1: an interesting phrasing that she said we just sat there together,
Speaker 1: because she was clearly watching TV, and yet even through
Speaker 1: this medium of separation, she felt that Fred Rogers was
Speaker 1: sitting with her showing her how to use chopsticks. And
Speaker 1: that's what he referred to Carril as holy ground, the
Speaker 1: space between Fred in the studio and all the millions
Speaker 1: of people children, youth and adults watching the neighborhood on television.
Speaker 1: George Worth is a Presbyterian minister and was a close
Speaker 1: friend of Fred's for twenty years. He told me that
Speaker 1: Fred's communication with kids through the television was sacred, an
Speaker 1: almost inexplicable communion. Something happened across that space that he
Speaker 1: believed was deeply spiritual and mystical um and so he
Speaker 1: he really thought about himself sitting there with just one person,
Speaker 1: even though there were millions of people watching. He thought
Speaker 1: about being with one person at a time. They called
Speaker 1: it Fred time it was on the program. Things would
Speaker 1: slow down as the program would begin, He'd take his
Speaker 1: sneakers off, he'd put on his sweater. He slowed the
Speaker 1: pace down, and that gave him the opportunity not only
Speaker 1: to see other people, but to be able to express
Speaker 1: his love and care for other people and reach out
Speaker 1: and touch our hearts as well. This was no TV gimmick.
Speaker 1: It was some sort of technique of attention kindness that
Speaker 1: Fred developed that he was able to communicate through the
Speaker 1: cameras and air waves and TV sets, But he communicated
Speaker 1: that attention and kindness in person too. What was true
Speaker 1: about fed Rogers is he was he was tuned in
Speaker 1: at a deeper level than most people. Uh. Fred could
Speaker 1: see with his eyes. He was very observant of what
Speaker 1: was happening around him, especially of the people with whom
Speaker 1: he was talking at whatever they were doing. But he
Speaker 1: also could see with his heart. Um. He had um
Speaker 1: an open heart to people. You know, this is particularly
Speaker 1: timely for me because I have a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: son and he and I are embroiled in a long term,
Speaker 1: friendly but philosophical argument about religion. And my son has
Speaker 1: now reached the point where he's he's really he really
Speaker 1: enjoys the what he thinks is the intellectual rigor of atheism.
Speaker 1: And uh, he likes to point out that that the
Speaker 1: people of religion have been responsible for so many terrible things,
Speaker 1: and that there's so much hypocrisy, and and I absolutely
Speaker 1: understand where it's coming from. And it is true that
Speaker 1: you can look at a lot of Christians and Christianity
Speaker 1: and see a lot of problems and a lot of
Speaker 1: violence against people and a lot of hatred. Even though
Speaker 1: I'm forty four, that still feels like a little child
Speaker 1: who's just learning that people can be bad. And I
Speaker 1: feel shocked by that. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: natural human responses is to go into fear, defensiveness, protection.
Speaker 1: And I wonder what made Fred Rogers so good at
Speaker 1: merging Christianity with love and and the expansion of rights
Speaker 1: and with care for each human being. And how how
Speaker 1: did you see Fred dealing with things that were things
Speaker 1: in the world that we're really bad murders, assassinations, violence, uh, genocide.
Speaker 1: How did he face those things both in his personal
Speaker 1: life spiritually and also just in his public work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a problem with a person in the church
Speaker 1: that I was serving who really was not only disagreeable,
Speaker 1: but was was eager to see me move on to
Speaker 1: another place. He just didn't like me. And I was
Speaker 1: telling Fred about it over lunch one day and he
Speaker 1: looked at me and he said, George, I wonder what
Speaker 1: happened to that man when he was a child that
Speaker 1: has caused him to be so angry and so um
Speaker 1: determined to hurt you. I wonder what ho what pain
Speaker 1: that man suffered when he was a child that blew
Speaker 1: me away? Um, that's one of the answer. And also
Speaker 1: he believed that ultimately God prevails and that God is good.
Speaker 1: God can cause no harm. God loves with an redeeming
Speaker 1: love all of God's children on earth, and God is
Speaker 1: sad and feels the pain when bad things happen. The
Speaker 1: question why does God allow bad things to happen, of course,
Speaker 1: is the theological question that all of us ask. There's
Speaker 1: no answer to that. Ultimately we just don't know. But
Speaker 1: what we do know is when the bad things happen,
Speaker 1: God comes alongside us. God is present to us not
Speaker 1: only through our prayers to reading the Bible, but through
Speaker 1: other people. And Fred believed in doing God's work in
Speaker 1: the world, being with people through the difficulty, no matter
Speaker 1: who those people were or what they believed. Fred's ministry,
Speaker 1: the enormity and diversity of his TV congregation required that
Speaker 1: he looked for and communicate the things that people hold
Speaker 1: in common with one another, rather than the things that
Speaker 1: differentiate or divide them via sect, or denomination or creed.
Speaker 1: He was a very receptive person to other faith traditions
Speaker 1: and very sensitive to people who came from no faith
Speaker 1: tradition at all. He was um, i would say, broad
Speaker 1: gaged in that respect, a Christian and eventually became, as
Speaker 1: you know, a Presbyterian minister. But Fred went to school
Speaker 1: on other religions, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, the other religions and
Speaker 1: found the good in all of those faith traditions and
Speaker 1: the people who adhered to them. And while Fred studied
Speaker 1: other faiths, Lisa dor Meyer says that Fred also knew
Speaker 1: that institutional religion could be co opted for political or
Speaker 1: social will gain. And sometimes you questioned how his own
Speaker 1: Presbyterian church was responding to the larger culture. There was
Speaker 1: tension there the Presbyterian Church back in the time that
Speaker 1: he was in seminary, and are amazing alums that came
Speaker 1: through in the late fifties the early sixties. Those were
Speaker 1: folks who went to Alabama to take part in the
Speaker 1: Freedom Marches, and they drove the food trucks and were
Speaker 1: so concerned about justice in the world, and and their
Speaker 1: preaching was prophetic about changing the world. And then we
Speaker 1: kind of shifted in the eighties and into the nineties
Speaker 1: into a more evangelical bend, and it was much more
Speaker 1: i would say, self reflective on personal relationship with Jesus
Speaker 1: rather than kind of this world changing theology and philosophy.
Speaker 1: And I think that that shift was difficult, not just
Speaker 1: for Fred, but a lot of others from his generation.
Speaker 1: For many years, the Presbyterian Church was not affirming of
Speaker 1: all people, and Fred was very affirming of all people,
Speaker 1: and so I think there was some discomfort there. Ask
Speaker 1: yourself again, what you feel when you hear the word religion. Today,
Speaker 1: it's nearly impossible to hear that word and not think
Speaker 1: of certain churches coming out in support of hurtful, harmful,
Speaker 1: even violent people and causes, the pain inflicted in the
Speaker 1: name of religion on gay people, or single mothers or
Speaker 1: divorced couples, or the untold numbers of children who suffered
Speaker 1: sexual abuse literally at the hands of a Christian church.
Speaker 1: What happens when you're so convinced of the rightness of
Speaker 1: your cause that human beings are less important than values,
Speaker 1: or commitments or commandments. Seeing the harm that people in
Speaker 1: the world have done in the name of faith, how
Speaker 1: can you ever be certain about the moral goodness of
Speaker 1: the things that you've been taught about your tradition. Fred
Speaker 1: grew up with his appellation Presbyterianism, where feelings were expected
Speaker 1: to remain beneath the surface, but his own experience helped
Speaker 1: him see that the things we feel as human beings
Speaker 1: are our shared common ground. Our feelings are where we
Speaker 1: can meet and understand one another. And Fred didn't waiver
Speaker 1: from that. His constant goal was to manifest love in
Speaker 1: the world, and that, Lisa says, makes him exceptional. I
Speaker 1: think that God sends saints to walk among us who
Speaker 1: are deeply spiritual people that somehow are able to I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us have been given gifts by God,
Speaker 1: and we we don't find within ourselves the ability to
Speaker 1: use them. And I think that he, for reasons that
Speaker 1: I can't explain, was able to fully embrace the gifts
Speaker 1: God gave him. Is this just out of reach for
Speaker 1: people like you and me? Fred didn't think so, and
Speaker 1: that's why he made his program as a beacon, as
Speaker 1: a map, as a guide for how to treat one
Speaker 1: another with care and kindness. Really take the time to
Speaker 1: see each other, to listen, to understand and to see
Speaker 1: ourselves in one another, and to accept the ways in
Speaker 1: which we're different, but to extend kindness and understanding and
Speaker 1: caring to everyone, regardless of what faith we do or
Speaker 1: don't subscribe to. Fred Rogers believed that we could make
Speaker 1: a better world here in this lifetime by accepting people,
Speaker 1: by helping people, even in their goodness. It's a challenge.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that I or Fred Rodgers have the
Speaker 1: ability all the time, any one of us to live
Speaker 1: in this, but to aspire to it, to be imperatively
Speaker 1: implored to strive towards that. That's that's the life schal
Speaker 1: I think that Mr Rodgers was sharing with us next time,
Speaker 1: and you could hear the beat, beat beat of the
Speaker 1: heart monitor and the dripping of all the i vs,
Speaker 1: and in the background you hear there are many ways
Speaker 1: to say I Love you. Finding Fred is produced by
Speaker 1: Transmitter Media. The team is Dan O'donnald, Jordan Bailey, and
Speaker 1: Mattie Foley. Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer
Speaker 1: for Transmitter Media is Gretta Cone. Executive producers at Fatherly
Speaker 1: are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team
Speaker 1: at I Heart Media. Special thanks this week to the
Speaker 1: sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh and the Reverend Vincent Holbe,
Speaker 1: Reverend John McCall, and the Reverend Bill Guy. Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: interview tape courtesy of the Television Academy Foundation and Interviews.
Speaker 1: The full interview is available at Television Academy dot com
Speaker 1: slash Interviews. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan, music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions and Alison Layton Brown. If you
Speaker 1: like what you're hearing, rate the show, review the show,
Speaker 1: and tell a friend I'm Carver Wallace. Thank you for listening.