Ji FU reviewed The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth
Much better than you'd expect on a religious view of a childhood hero.
5 stars
A fantastic tale of Mister Rogers. I figured it would probably be a fluff piece about how we should be kind to each other and not preach religion. I was glad to learn I was wrong. Amy Hollingsworth is a preacher's wife, raised Catholic, but her husband is a Protestant (Pentacostal I think but I haven't been able to confirm that) pastor.
Mister Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. His parents assumed he'd go to seminary, so he did, but was called by God to children's television and not the pulpit. He tried to the get the American Presbyterian Church to ordain him a pastor without a parish and assign him to children's television, possibly producing content for the denomination's Sunday Schools, but they did not. Eventually he did finish his studies whilst working on Mister Rogers Neighborhood, but he never did pastor a congregation.
I really appreciated how Fred …
A fantastic tale of Mister Rogers. I figured it would probably be a fluff piece about how we should be kind to each other and not preach religion. I was glad to learn I was wrong. Amy Hollingsworth is a preacher's wife, raised Catholic, but her husband is a Protestant (Pentacostal I think but I haven't been able to confirm that) pastor.
Mister Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. His parents assumed he'd go to seminary, so he did, but was called by God to children's television and not the pulpit. He tried to the get the American Presbyterian Church to ordain him a pastor without a parish and assign him to children's television, possibly producing content for the denomination's Sunday Schools, but they did not. Eventually he did finish his studies whilst working on Mister Rogers Neighborhood, but he never did pastor a congregation.
I really appreciated how Fred Rogers was able to over the course of like three years of correspondence with Hollingsworth really show love to her and really introduce Christ to her in a way that even a Cradle Catholic Preacher's wife hadn't known.
I've heard the story of seeing people hit in the face with pies on T.V. leading Fred to feel he had to get involved to ensure such a powerful medium was used for betterment of humankind, and not such demeaningness. However I was most touched by his description of the Holy Spirit working between the T.V. and the television neighbor to comfort them and tell them exactly what they needed to hear. More than once, he described a way a viewer, kid or parent, described how when he said such-and-such on such-and-such episode and how it changed their life, yet he wouldn't remember ever having said that, and went back and verified it was never in the script, but God found a way regardless.
I highly recommend this book, particularly to believers in a time when many in The West are lost, both in and out of the Church.