Don Wildmon
AFA/AFR founder
February 2006 – As I write this, NBC is preparing to begin a new series called The Book of Daniel. AFA has been alerting Christians to the series and has been successful in getting several NBC affiliates not to carry the program.
The “Christian” characters in the program form a totally dysfunctional family. But NBC feels they are representative of many Christian families.
The program’s main characters include Daniel Webster, a drug-addicted Episcopal priest; his alcoholic wife; his son, a 23-year-old homosexual Republican; his daughter, a 16-year-old drug dealer; a 16-year-old adopted son who is having sex with the bishop’s daughter; his sister-in-law who is having a lesbian affair with her husband’s secretary; and a very unconventional white-robed, bearded Jesus who talks to the priest. Jesus is portrayed as a good-old-boy kind of buddy, and assures the priest that his druggie daughter and promiscuous son are good kids.
It is written by Jack Kenny, a practicing homosexual who describes himself as being “in Catholic recovery,” interested in Buddhist teachings about reincarnation and unsure exactly how he defines God and/or Jesus. “I don’t necessarily know that all the myth surrounding him (Jesus) is true,” he said.
NBC received well over 600,000 e-mails asking them not to run the series, but they told Christians to take a hike. NBC said it was good drama. They would have been more correct if they had called it good comedy.
Trying to take the steam out of AFA’s movement, several NBC affiliates provided pre-screening for ministers in their local areas. Their thinking was that if they could get these ministers in to watch the show, the ministers would say how good it is and AFA would be humiliated. But a funny thing happened on the way to wiping out AFA’s credibility. AFA’s description of the program proved correct.
After viewing the first episode at WBIR in Knoxville, several religious leaders gave their views on the program. Brian Kearns, minister at Lighthouse Christian Church, said, “I think it’s very demeaning to Christianity. It’s an assault on the Christian faith.”
Rev. Tom Seay, of the Bearden United Methodist Church, described it as “just a pretty sorry piece of work.”
Dale Powers of the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville said, “You’re portraying something as normal that is just absurd.”
And Rev. John Stuart said, “What the show has done is demean my faith. You’ve diminished the person I worship … you’ve wounded me.”
NBC lost millions when reputable advertisers ran away from the program. But that mattered not to NBC. They had an agenda and losing money was a non-issue.
That the media’s hostility to Christians and Christianity runs deep is no longer a dirty little secret. It is now a well-known fact.
It is time for Christians to demand that it end. And it is time for Christians to get involved. No, it is past time. 
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