Abstract
Of all the characters who have lived out their lives primarily on the comics pages of America’s newspapers, very few of them have become as ubiquitous and beloved as those of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. Beginning their syndicated newspaper run in 1950, when Schulz was less than thirty years old, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and all the rest went on to become perennial fixtures in American popular culture.
One unusual feature of this development, though, is Schulz’s use of explicitly Christian material in his work at a time when American print and television media typically avoided references to religion. In A Charlie Brown Religion, communications scholar Stephen J. Lind offers a readable and interesting religious biography of Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz, exploring the cartoonist’s religious life in exhaustive detail. In the process, Lind examines Schulz’s output as an unusual case study in the place of religion in mass media.
Lind introduces us to a shy boy from the upper Midwest who embraced an idiosyncratic Christian faith in a Church of God congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was while worshipping and studying the Bible with this tiny congregation that Peanuts first appeared in syndication. Later, Schulz moved to California and led a Bible study for years at a United Methodist church near his new home, using a well-worn copy of The Interpreter’s Bible as his guide to preparation. All the while, Peanuts’ popularity was growing, and Lind makes it a point to show that Schulz’s occasional use of biblical quotations and religious themes in his strips had endeared him to religious audiences.
It was after this move to California that Sparky’s characters first appeared on television. The chapter covering the creation, airing, and reception of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is probably the strongest in the volume, taking advantage of the author’s close understanding of early television history and its midcentury context. Lind notes that the program was conceived by a producer during a telephone call, and ended up focusing largely on cultural trends that were completely predictable, such as a wide cultural reaction in the early 1960s against artificial Christmas trees. Sparky’s insistence on including explicit religious content in the program, however, broke a taboo, and was one of the chief reasons that studio executives hated the special when they first viewed it. Airing anyway, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was embraced by the viewing public, showing, for Lind, that Charles Schulz was able to handle religious themes in ways that were simultaneously thought-provoking and unthreatening.
Although Sparky came to Christian faith in a relatively conservative church, Lind outlines how his theological perspective broadened as he aged. Although Lind works carefully to note that Schulz was a Christian throughout almost his entire adult life, he also notes that he was unusually reticent about his faith, rarely speaking even to his children about his beliefs. When a friend suggested to him that he had evolved into a “secular humanist,” Schulz wore the label in public from time to time, causing some observers to assume that Schulz was an atheist or an agnostic. Lind’s purpose in writing this book seems to have been to refute this claim. Although Sparky was a sect unto himself, that sect was a branch of the Christian church.
Schulz’s reticence about his own faith and his clear personal preference for isolated insights over systematic thought makes a comprehensive account of his faith difficult to construct. Nevertheless, Lind succeeds in presenting a clear, enjoyable account of Sparky’s religious ideas in which a resistance to over-theologizing, an impatience with formalism, and an allergy to overbearing religious institutions stand as key themes. Lind also notes that Sparky’s methods of including religious themes in his strips and other media tended not to be prescriptive or “evangelical;” Schulz tended to frame biblical quotations and religious references in sparse narrative environments in which the reader must supply at least some of their own meaning. Without ever saying so, Lind seems to offer Schulz’s approach to the tricky question of religion’s place in media as a middle way between enforced secularism and blatant proselytization.
As Lind admits, his volume is closely focused on Schulz’s religious life and thought, and pays only passing attention to other aspects of his life. This focus is altogether appropriate, although there are parts of the story that could have been better contextualized. For instance, early in the book Schulz goes with amazing speed from being an unknown cartoonist to being a widely-known celebrity; this change makes Schulz a wealthy man rather quickly. Sparky was committed to philanthropic giving, but Lind does little to explore any connection that may have existed between Schulz’s comfortable circumstances and his spiritual outlook.
Lind’s background is in communications, and he seems most comfortable in the field of media studies, the source of most of his historical context and theory. Although Lind’s use of theory is light, it is suitable to the project, making meaningful interpretations of his subject possible. The University Press of Mississippi has published this book as a part of its commitment to publishing scholarly works on comics and comic artists, but students of this field should know that Lind makes little use of this literature.
It is impossible to conclude without noting that Lind’s primary research for this book was impressive and exhaustive. In addition to many interviews with people that knew Schulz well, Lind read every Peanuts strip, of which more than seventeen thousand are extant, and coded each one for religious content. This research, in and of itself, must have been a Herculean task.
University Press of Mississippi has priced this book at a relatively low $25.00, expecting that it will be of interest to the general reader. They are right. A Charlie Brown Religion is appropriate for general readers with interest in the Peanuts franchise and its relationship to the Christian faith, pastors who may use Peanuts material in ministry from time to time, and scholars who have an interest in media and religion.