Pod Only Knows #018 – David Feltmate – The Simpsons, Religion, and Other Stuff
34 years ago, in December of 1989, Fox aired Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, a Simpsons Christmas special, the de facto pilot to the subsequent primetime sitcom, and a cultural phenomenon was born.
To people of a certain age, The Simpsons is part of the cultural DNA. And as an animated sitcom, it had unique license to explore elements of American culture that no other series could. And one of those elements was religion.
The Simpson family went to church. They lived in a multicultural, multiethnic (but still predominantly white and Christian) community. They exposed aspects of American religious life that were hiding in plain sight.
Dr. David Feltmate wrote about all this (in addition to how religion is portrayed in Family Guy and South Park) in his book Drawn to the Gods, and this week, he joined Kelly and John to talk about his life in religious studies, why he loves The Simpsons, and how religion exists in a post-Simpsons America.
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