Preachers’ Wives and Daughters Tell it on the Telly

These days, I’m a little confused about whether the main function of television is to give us a break from our regular lives or to reveal aspects of other people’s lives that may in turn shed light on our own.  Maybe, even before this whole “reality” genre took off, it’s always been a little bit of both.  In any case, when I learn about new shows that come right into my territory, I become a bit like a four-legged creature:  all of my senses go on alert.

Now that Downton Abbey has run its course for a while (and frankly I was getting a little tired of Mary’s lockjaw; weren’t you?) I’m down to just one regular show I watch:  Nashville.  It’s funny, and kind of silly, how I look forward to putting everything aside for an hour to watch it.  I tell myself that it’s partly because my son and I had such a wonderful short visit to the actual city last summer; I’m just keeping the memory of music streaming out of every doorway alive.  But it looks like I may have to make room for a couple of other new shows – if I can figure out when and where to find them – because they are both about something right up my alley:  being a clergy wife and raising a preacher’s daughter.

Launched by the producers of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” The Sisterhood is no shrinking violet over on the TLC network.  It features five different women, real pastors’ wives apparently, and they’re not cut from the cloth of demure and obedient spouses, that is for sure.  You can see it just in how they walk arm in arm together in the trailer, each one – confident in her own body – saying loud and clear, “I’m steppin’ out my way.”  They share some of the pressures that they feel in their positions, saying things like:  “ A First Lady has to be perfect because she sets the standard for the congregation.”  That word – “perfect” – would hardly be the one that would leap to mind, however, as we get to know them.  I haven’t seen an entire episode yet, but apparently there are facts about each woman and (also about their marriages) that would raise eyebrows among many parishioners – one gets tattoos, another shrieks with delight when she opens a present of handcuffs from her husband, a third talks about her past as a crack addict.

Not surprisingly, there has been some controversy around this show.  A website called ” www.change.org”  has been circulating this petition:

The Sisterhood is being portrayed as a Christian reality show, featuring Preacher’s/Pastor’s wives from Atlanta, GA. The previews and highlights of the upcoming show (sic) is pure garbage and does not portray the reality of being a Christian or the reality of being a Preacher’s or Pastor’s wife. The airing of this show is not only offensive to the Body of Christ, but it is also degrading to Women of Color (specifically). This show mocks everything that we, as believers, stand for. It is disgusting, disgraceful, inappropriate and an inaccurate display of what we strive to accomplish as Christians. The airing of this show only adds more fuel to the ever-present distasteful stereotype that we, as Christians, fight daily to erase. We must stand together and put an end to TLC’s clear derogatory distortion of the Body of Christ and Women of God (specifically, Preacher’s and Pastor’s wives)! Please spread the word.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Christians apparently now find themselves fighting a “distasteful stereotype” so different from the one that used to be there?  Needless to say, this kind of raging conflict makes a plain ol’ pastor’s wife like me take notice and wonder where I stand.  I’m searching for some middle ground that has enough bounce to it, and plenty of fresh air all around — wanting to step out with vitality like those women in Atlanta, but not in a way that draws attention to myself.  Whatever skeletons I have in my closet, I’ll do my best to keep them out of the public eye.  But nor will I shrink from trying to be fully who I really am:  that way perdition surely lies.

The other show focusing on clergy family issues — “Preachers’ Daughters” — will air for the first time this coming week on the Lifetime channel.  It’s being called “a new reality series of biblical proportions.”  This one will follow the lives of three different teenage girls and, of course, all of the issues they have living within the confines of a clergy household and the ways in which they try to bust out.  With one family, we’re trying to discover the paternity of a girl’s baby.  The trailer opens with a confluence of preacher fathers saying “No daughter of mine is going to church dressed like that.”  Predictable, right?  This takes me back to a Christmas when my husband gave our daughter an outfit and she, speechless at first, finally said: “That’d be nice, Dad……if I were Amish.”  Once she was in her senior year of high school, he hardly noticed – or tried not to notice—when she wore those clingy short black skirts.  This was not a battle he wanted to take on, and usually it was best to keep church and school separate.  Wait, come to think of it, she probably wore that kind of skirt to church on more than one Sunday, too….

Maybe our daughter will get a chance to watch the new show, but mostly she’s full-up in her own life at college, having taken with her – for better or for worse—whatever the legacy of being a preacher’s kid (or “PK”) will be.  It may take some years for this to play out; it will definitely take a whole lot longer than a bunch of hour-long segments.  Still, we might flop down on the couch and see how other people handle the whole gig once in a while — as we move along in the reality show of our own regular lives.