(Heather Clark – Christian News Network) “The script for Living Biblically reads like it has been written by your typical, cynical, atheistic, internet trolls, as the story lines feed into almost every stereotypical caricature of Christianity that we find on the World Wide Web.”
Despite its producers stated intentions not to be offensive, but to bring religion into primetime television, a blasphemous new sitcom on CBS called “Living Biblically” is being decried as a “Hollywood mockery of Christians” and in need of prayer itself.
The show is based on the book “The Year of Living Biblically,” written by A.J. Jacobs, an agnostic Jew who makes fun of certain parts of the Torah that he finds odd and concludes that “fundamentalists may claim to take the Bible literally, but they actually just pick and choose certain rules to follow.”
Producer Patrick Walsh told Fox News earlier this month that he met with Jacobs, who advised that he wanted to create a comedy show about religion. He expressed enthusiasm about the result: a story about a man who loses his best friend and learns his wife is having a baby, sparking the desire to try to be a “better man” and live by what he reads in the Bible.
He regularly meets with a Roman Catholic priest and a rabbi, referred to as the “God squad,” in a local bar to receive direction.
“That was the intent, to do a show that was not preachy and off-putting to people who do not practice religion, but also very respectful and welcoming to those that do,” Walsh explained. “A big part of my pitch was that 84 percent of the world aligns itself with religion, and yet there’s nothing on television for people of faith.”
“The only times you hear it mentioned is things like Bill Maher, which is extremely critical, and the other end of the spectrum are movies like ‘God’s Not Dead’ and ‘Left Behind,’ which are successful, but I think they’re so pious and solemn that they’re off-putting to a general audience,” he opined. “They’re usually just successful amongst religious people.”
However, in the broadcast, after the main character, Chip Curry, advises his wife that he wants to do a “soul cleanse” until their baby arrives, she exclaims, “I’m not throwing out my rap albums. You know how much I love my filthy, filthy sex rap.”
When he tells his wife, an atheist, that it’s important to have faith, she asks why God made super gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease. Moments later, Curry tells his wife that if his quest goes beyond the nine months, according to the Bible, he cannot touch her while she is menstruating and that if she gets “crabby,” he has to go live in the desert.
“You know, it’s just Bible stuff,” Curry says.
Related:
Michelle Lesley: Living UNbiblically: 4 Reasons CBS’s “Living Biblically” ISN’T (And Why Christians Should Watch it Anyway)