Freaks, geeks or antiques

BRYONY Taylor is a little nervous about her latest sermon. It’s on Pentecost, the Christian festival marking the Holy Spirit’s descent on the disciples, and she is planning on using a popcorn maker. “It’s to show that the Holy Spirit is like the wind,” Bryony explains. “It’s a bit of a risk. I just hope it works.”

At 37, and with a broad smile and a sense of mischief, Bryony is not your average member of the clergy. Before graduating from theological college, about a year ago, she worked as a social media consultant, blogging regularly and setting up the website Anglican Memes, sharing jokes about the Church. It was her familiarity with social media and, more broadly, popular culture, that led to her being asked to write a book about Christians on TV. She didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

“It was very easy for me to write about because I love telly,” laughs Bryony. “There have been so many clergy on TV that I ended up just having to focus on British TV. I was thinking of looking at popular culture in general but there’s such a wealth in terms of how Christians are portrayed on the radio and in novels. There’s even Reverend Green on the board when you play Cluedo. I decided to narrow it down because I don’t think anyone has explored the portrayal of clergy on British TV in this much detail before.”

In the course of her research, Bryony, who is based at St Michael and All Angels Church, in Houghton-le-Spring, came across the quote that in all the BBC’s religious output, the clergy is characterised as “freaks, geeks or antiques”. This provided a useful starting point. “In the book, I explore why that is,” says Bryony. “I think part of the thing is that actually they are interesting and fun to watch. If we had real-life portrayals, they wouldn’t be that interesting – and, let’s face it, most churches are full of freaks, geeks and antiques.

“The potential for humour in the Church is really, really high. We wear funny clothes, we read long, complicated prayers; we have to try to remember people’s names when we’re doing Christenings and weddings. The potential for it to go wrong is really high, and that’s why, over the years, there have been so many comedy characters that have been clergy on TV and in popular culture.”

Far from objecting to being made fun of, Bryony believes the Church should embrace it – if for no other reason than to avoid taking itself too seriously. “The Anglican Memes site was set up to help us make fun of ourselves and also to cheer up clergy who are feeling a bit despondent and a bit fed up,” she says.

“I think Jesus was the master satirist. There’s a bit in the book where I explore how he would give modern stand-ups a run for their money. He had a gang of followers and he gave them all nicknames – he called Peter "Rocky" and James and John the "Sons of Thunder". You can imagine the banter that the disciples would have had. One of the points of the book is that we do need to have a good old laugh at ourselves and recognise where we come across as ridiculous.”

The book is subtitled, “Christians on the Telly: The Good, the Bad and the Quirky,” and this translates as three sections. In the first, Bryony discusses both the virtuous and the true-to-life, including the Vicar of Dibley.

“I look at the Vicar of Dibley as a wholesome character and also the more recent Adam Smallbone, who is the eponymous hero of Rev,” she says. “I explore the connection between the countryside and nostalgia and clergy characters. One of the points I make is that Richard Curtis wrote the Vicar of Dibley to try and persuade people that having women priests was a good thing.

“I think what’s very clever is that it’s set in this countryside village. It’s a very gentle sitcom that appeals to middle England – the people who would have been opposed to women’s ministry. My argument is that it worked like a Trojan horse in terms of changing people’s perceptions of women’s ministry because of the packaging it came in.”

As Bryony points out, the TV portrayal of the countryside in which clergy are often placed is an idealised version which has never existed. It plays to a fondness for nostalgia with which the Church is inextricably linked.

“Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury) described Britain not as a secular country, but a country haunted by the memory of religion,” says Bryony. “A big part of the book is exploring English attitudes to religion and Christianity. This country is unique with Christianity being the state religion, but the attitude to religion has changed.”

A reflection of this is the prevalence of atheist humour, even from mainstream comedians like Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais. Bryony covers this in her “bad” section. “It’s about characters who are inherently evil but are supposed to be religious, like the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells from Blackadder, and I also look at the rise of the atheist stand-up comedian on television and how much that has changed people’s perceptions of Christians,” she says. “A lot of the attacks are aimed at people who are fundamentalist Christians, who believe the Bible literally, but actually there aren’t many people like that in the UK, so in a lot of ways, it’s very lazy comedy.”

As part of her discussion, Bryony looks at the nature of offence and how it has changed as attitudes have evolved. She cites the Life of Brian, which provoked outrage when it was released in the 1970s, as an example. Now it is considered mild, and many of the Biblical jokes are lost on an increasingly secular audience.

The final category – the quirky – includes EastEnders’ Dot Branning and the various religious characters played by Rowan Atkinson. “She’s one of the only ordinary Christian characters on television,” says Bryony of the former. “She’s kind of the BBC’s go-to character for Christian things.”

As fewer people attend church and cliches become less relevant, Bryony feels there is a move towards the normalisation of clergy on TV, with less caricatures and more rounded portrayals. This, she feels, is a good thing, in that it helps viewers identify with vicars as real people.

“The curate in Broadchurch is quite an interesting portrayal because he’s got a past,” says Bryony. “We are starting to get much more realistic portrayals of Christians on the television.”

She still believes, however, that there is room for comedy, and her favourite religious TV character is the hapless Father Dougal McGuire from Father Ted. “I’m the Dougal McGuire at the moment in my parish,” she laughs. “He’s so totally incompetent that he gives hope to everybody.”

While Bryony acknowledges that the book might ruffle a few feathers, she hopes it will help promote a sense of openness within the Church and a greater awareness of its place in society. “We wouldn’t have our rich comedy heritage without Christianity, because comedy is about challenging people in power,” she says. “I think we need to lighten up a bit and recognise that we don’t have that position of authority that we used to have.”

• More TV Vicar? by Bryony Taylor (Darton, Longman & Todd, £9.99); www.facebook.com/christiansonthetelly