Bartlet4America News Archive

‘West Wing’ and a Prayer

By NANCY HAUGHT
The Oregonian

The political drama’s religous component adds depth and interest, the creator says

Aaron Sorkin, the man who brought us "The West Wing," has a confession to make: He is not a deeply religious man, he just writes one for TV.

"I'm Jewish, but I never went to Hebrew school," says Sorkin, 39, who grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. While he spent the seventh grade attending friends' bar mitzvahs, he didn't have his own. "In our family, when the men turned 13, you had a big party." He's making up for it now.

Religion has a recurring role on "The West Wing," one with enough depth and character to earn the Emmy-award-winning series praise from Catholics in Media Associates for its portrayal of Judeo-Christian values and the Humanitas Prize for affirming the dignity of all people.

As real-life politicos ponder George W. Bush's religious references, about 18 million "West Wing" fans tune in weekly to see firsthand the struggles of a president who -- unlike most of his movie and television predecessors -- is not just generically Christian.

Josiah "Jed" Bartlet, whom Sorkin apparently did not create in his own image, is religious in particular terms. Played by Martin Sheen, Bartlet is a Roman Catholic, an economist who almost became a priest, a man who prays the rosary in the Oval Office, personally opposes both abortion and capital punishment, publicly defends gay rights and a woman's right to choose and takes on all Scripture-quoting comers, trading Bible-verse volleys with born-again fervor. He's a true believer in both God and the Constitution, and a little battered for being caught between the two on more than one occasion.

As a writer, Sorkin says he looks for these points of conflict for their dramatic tension and the depth they add to his characters. He expects Bartlet to continue to find himself in the hard places between personal faith and public duty.

"I'd like to see him struggling over it more," he says. "Because the fact of the matter is when you're the president of this country you're the president of an awful lot of people who think many, many different ways."

"The West Wing" bucks the trend in prime time television, says William D. Romanowski, author of "Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture." It's more common for television shows to shy away from the particulars of religious experience in favor of a more general approach to spirituality, Romanowski says.

In that way, programs such as "Touched by an Angel" appeal to baby boomer interest in spirituality without risking detailed portrayals of any particular religious tradition, he says. Other shows, such as "Law & Order," may deal with religious issues from time to time, but it's still rare for a popular prime time series to feature religion prominently, consistently and in particular terms.

"If the president on 'The West Wing' is Catholic, practicing and consistent about it, that's a positive thing," says Romanowski, who teaches at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. Although 80 to 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, he says, far fewer know much about their faith. A show such as "The West Wing" can educate as well as entertain.

It can also chip away at what pop-culture critic Robert Thompson calls "this age of hip irony."

"To make this guy a practicing Catholic who crosses himself before major events in his life creates a powerful sense of the earnest leader," says Thompson, a Syracuse University professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television.

As Bartlet's character unfolds from episode to episode, Thompson says, "we get a sense that he really believes in God, that he's not using him as a campaign consultant or dropping his name in speeches. . . . One gets the sense that this isn't just stained-glass-window-dressing."

For Sorkin, making Bartlet a deeply religious man and weaving religious themes through "West Wing" plots is a way of redeeming religion.

"Growing up, it was very easy for me to think, as it is very easy for a lot of people to think, that religion -- that most often one should be suspicious of it. That most often it's an instrument of hypocrisy or, worse yet, of bullying: 'You're not living your life the way I would have you live it, the way God would have you live it. Therefore, God is going to punish you; you are somehow less in God's eyes.' Obviously, that kind of thing is insidious and terrible, and I point to that often on 'The West Wing.'

"But what I want to make sure to point to just as often is the way in which faith can be magnificent, an enormous comfort and an incredible road map."

It is also, for Bartlet, complicated. "We hear in the pilot episode," Sorkin says, "that he doesn't like abortion and that he goes around the country encouraging young women not to have them, but that he absolutely does not believe that is something that the state can legislate."

In other episodes, Bartlet spars with members of the Christian right over gay marriage and school prayer. He wrestles with his own conscience over the death penalty. He lashes out with Scripture when it suits him, and sits humbled before a Chinese refugee whose command of the New Testament puts Bartlet to shame.

Sorkin relies on an informal network of consultants to help him flesh out religious arguments and find the language of faith. When, last season, the Bartlet White House wrestled with whether to stay an execution, Sorkin e-mailed his own rabbi.

"I said, 'This is what I'm writing about right now. Do you have any thoughts?' And, oh, boy, did he." The result was a passionate speech by a rabbi to Toby Ziegler, Bartlet's communications director (played by Richard Schiff). For that same episode, Sorkin talked to a Catholic priest, a Baptist minister and a Quaker.

"People are very willing -- in fact, they're eager -- to put their two cents in," Sorkin says. "I think they really like the fact that the conversation is taking place at all in prime time television."

Sorkin is delighted that his Thanksgiving episode on the plight of persecuted Chinese Christians sparked morning-after questions about the biblical origins of "shibboleth" (Judges 12:6), and that Bartlet's tirade against a conservative Christian radio personality (borrowed from an Internet open letter to controversial radio host Laura Schlessinger) had viewers turning to Exodus and Leviticus to see for themselves what the Bible says about selected crimes and punishment.

Sorkin hopes his characters -- which he describes as "smart and sensitive and attractive," in a you'd-like-to-have-them-to-dinner way -- inspire real-life people to talk more about religion, too. "That's how it happened to me," he says.

When, a few years ago, Bill Moyers televised a public television series of conversations on the book of Genesis, Sorkin says he was hooked. "It was fantastic to see these brilliant people . . . having these fascinating conversations about Genesis and the Bible," he says. "And I thought, boy, I want to start one of these conversations, too -- the upshot of which was essentially that God is extremely more complicated than we can imagine.

"Anybody who didn't get drawn into their TV set during that -- I don't know what they were listening to."

Clearly, Sorkin was listening.