What if Ned Flanders is THE Christian?

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I moustache you a few questions about Ned Flanders

Okay so a few days ago I was thinking about an article I read years ago about how, besides Jesus, the name most closely associated with Christianity in the minds of American high schoolers is Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. And how that's good, actually.

Then, today on Bluesky, I saw the cover of the edition of Christianity Today it came from. It's from 2001, and is actually an excerpt from Mark I. Pinsky's book, The Gospel According to the Simpsons. You can read it online even now.

I was reflecting on this nearly 23-year-old piece because The Simpsons is an incredibly important text to Australian millennials — reruns of the first 10 seasons were broadcast on Channel 10 weekdays at 6pm for years. It means that, if the premise of the article is broadly true, Ned Flanders was probably their most significant model of what a Christian life could look like, at least as depicted in the media. Did stupid, sexy Flanders shape how Australian millennials engaged with Christianity? Was that good for Christians? How does Ned's example hold up to what they've seen unfold in public discourse since then?

Pinsky, who is a Jewish true crime and religion reporter with a particular interest in evangelical Christianity, thinks Ned Flanders and family are a basically accurate — and positive — depiction of evangelical Christians in America. Christianity Today must agree, or they wouldn't have republished the article.

From CT:

Many evangelicals would have no difficulty in recognizing Ned and his family as their own. Gerry Bowler, professor of philosophy at Canadian Nazarene College in Calgary and chairman of the Center for the Study of Christianity and Contemporary Values, calls Flanders "television's most effective exponent of a Christian life well-lived."

After an exhaustive list of examples of Ned's religious attributes, Pinsky compares the fictional Flanders family to the actually real Hardaway family, who are evangelicals from Florida.

The father, Dan Hardaway says, "All in all, it would be flattering to be associated with Ned Flanders, based on what I know about the person and how he lives out his faith" but that some Christians might be put off by some of the idiosyncrasies associated with the character, like "nerdy behavior."

I'd be interested to see if this take still holds up decades later among my fellow millennials who watched this show on a daily basis for years. Was Ned ever a yardstick for what counts as "Christian"? How does Ned compare to the Christians they met in subsequent years?

I have not seen Saltburn

It's Chanukah

I don't cover content from other faith traditions nearly as much as I'd like, but you'd better not sleep on Shoshana. Here's her X and her Insta.

Santos means "saints", btw

Thanks for sending this to me Andrew!

Spotify Wrapped called me homophobic

Spotify's annual data dump on all its users might signify that even my leisure activities are being actively surveilled, but it also told me my "Sound Town" — what place most closely matches my music taste.

I got Colorado Springs, USA, because I listen to Jars of Clay, John Mark McMillan and Mutemath — bands fairly popular with evangelical millennials. Sure enough, my American friend Jake told me it's "Focus on the Family country". Cool cool cool.

I have no idea why all the other music I listen to didn't put me in Berkeley, Burlington or Cambridge like all the other gays. Maybe Christianity just overpowers everything else — like a single Carolina Reaper chili pepper overwhelming a whole meal.

So I wonder where my real Sound Town would be, assuming the religious and queer music is weighted equally? After all, my most listened to artists were Sufjan Stevens, Janelle Monae, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mutemath and Kylie Minogue. That is, unless there is a thriving underground gay Christian scene in Colorado Springs I'm unaware of?

Maybe it looks something like this:

Prince of Egypt stage musical

Dunno about you, but I grew up watching Dreamworks' Prince of Egypt animated feature. I'm going to make a huge generalisation and say Christian and Jewish kids of all kinds probably did?

I wasn't aware it was adapted to the stage on West End (why didn't anyone tell me?) and now it's available to purchase on Apple, Amazon and Google.

Sadly, the original Dreamworks soundtrack isn't available to Australians on Spotify, but the stage production version songs are! Another one for the Modern Relics Spotify playlist.

Some interesting things to note: There's 10 additional songs, plus extra scenes. Moses mourns the deaths of all the Egyptian firstborn sons. Also there's "a moment of reconciliation" between Moses and Ramses.

From RNS's interview with director Scott Schwarz:

Of course, there is a conflict going on in the Middle East right now. And I think the show can’t help but make people think about that. But I think the show is about humanity. It is about the Hebrew people. It’s about the Egyptian people. It’s about people in conflict and how, as human beings and family members, and partners and friends, can we try to navigate these conflicts that can seem out of our control?

Fun fact: Prince of Egypt and Shrek were in production at Dreamworks at the same time, and the company believed Prince would be the big success. So if you were in the bad books, you got sent to work on Shrek instead. Honestly, masterpieces, both.

Transylvania approved defense

Sculpting creatures from the Bible

Jazza is a major art YouTuber based in Australia. I watched a fair amount of his content when we both happened to go through a Warhammer phase around COVID lockdown.

At the time I thought, "Am I getting Christian vibes from this guy?" Sure enough, he was raised Latter-day Saint, but is now an atheist. Anyway here's a video where he sculpts a biblical Leviathan out of waxy clay stuff.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone