c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Meet Father “Ray” Raynaux (Kevin Anderson), star of ABC’s upcoming new drama series, “Nothing Sacred.”

Father Ray is a Catholic priest who runs a cash-strapped parish. He keeps an atheist on staff to balance the books, prefers presiding over funerals to weddings because “you know they’ll stay dead,” and in the midst of a bad week quips that he’d be a great priest “if I didn’t hate God so much.”

And in the series’ first episode (set for Sept. 18), he advises a parishioner seeking advice on whether to have an abortion to follow her own conscience, and contemplates leaving the priesthood to have an affair with a married woman.

Not surprisingly, many Catholic organizations are up in arms over what they’ve seen and heard of “Nothing Sacred.” The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights dubbed the series “nothing more than a political statement against the Catholic Church.”

Some religious organizations are being kinder. The Rev. James Martin, a columnist for the Catholic magazine America, dismissed the controversy and called the show “the best television series ever produced about the rich and often complicated lives of American Catholics. It is, in a word, brilliant.”

And Arne Owens, a spokesman for the Christian Coalition, offered guarded praise, suggesting that “the fact that religion is being dealt with at all in prime-time television hours is a positive thing.”

If that’s the case, Owens should have a lot to be happy about this fall, as God will be found all across network television.

In addition to Anderson’s Father Ray, the recent wave of quirky TV clergymen includes Stephen Collins as a pool-hustling minister on WB’s “7th Heaven,” Dan Aykroyd as a Harley-riding Episcopalian priest on ABC’s “Soul Man” and David Ramsey as a gospel-singing pastor on UPN’s upcoming “Good News.”

Meanwhile, angels and other agents of God are regular characters on CBS’ “Touched by an Angel” and “Promised Land,” and ABC’s new “Teen Angel.” Even series with nonreligious themes such as “NYPD Blue,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “The Practice” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” feature matters of the spirit as recurring motifs.

While God has appeared on the tube in the past, it’s safe to say his Nielsens have never been this high.

A lot of the credit for that can be placed squarely at the feet of Martha Williamson, the creator (technically, re-creator) of “Touched by an Angel.”

The original, unaired version of “Touched” was a more irreverent look at angels that CBS hoped would capitalize on a recent trend of people buying books and memorabilia about the winged servants. When Williamson was brought in to remake the concept, she refused to joke around.

“Without being religious _ certainly without being denominational _ you can still be reverent,” she says, “and it seemed to me if they wanted to appeal to the people who wanted to see a television show about angels, you take them seriously.”

Williamson’s vision, which glorifies belief in God without coming down on the side of any particular religion, has landed the show firmly in the Nielsen Top 10.

Why the recent surge in public interest in God? “Nothing Sacred” creator David Manson thinks he knows why.

“Either it’s pre-millennial fever,” he says, “or just the aging of the baby boom generation, where all of a sudden they have children, their parents are passing away, and the issues of mortality, legacy and what you pass along to your children are on people’s minds.”

The success of “Touched” made a lot of network executives less gun-shy about allowing God-related projects. “`Touched by an Angel’ opened the door for dramas about spiritual matters,” says Manson. “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

Of course, not all these shows are really taking advantage of that freedom. The makers of “Soul Man” and “7th Heaven” stress that their main characters are family men who just happen to be clergymen.

But for some, like Catholic League president William Donohue, the meal is going down with a sour taste. “On `Nothing Sacred,'”he says, “they’ve set up this dichotomy whereby a priest who openly denounces the church’s teachings on sexuality is depicted as a compassionate, likable person, and those who are loyal to the church are portrayed as cold-hearted tyrants.”

Manson, who is Jewish and gets technical input from a Jesuit priest, defends his show by suggesting that Father Ray’s occasional crises of faith are a universal experience.

“I think in reality God doesn’t always show up on time,” he says. “He’s not on call, he doesn’t have a pager number. … On this show, Kevin’s character is going to be looking for the one-armed man, and the one-armed man is God.”

Donohue says he has less of a problem with Ray’s wavering belief than with the scenes related to the church’s doctrines on sex, in particular the confessional scene involving the girl seeking advice on abortion.

“The young girl is struggling with the question of an abortion, and all she’s getting is, `Make up your own mind,’ which means he’s violated his duties as a confessor; and if that’s all he has to say, why does she need to go to church in the first place?”

Donohue’s crusade _ he recently asked President Clinton to speak out against the show _ may well backfire. Five years ago the Rev. Donald Wildmon staged a boycott against “NYPD Blue,” based on the show’s racy content. All the boycott did was raise public awareness of the show, guaranteeing a huge audience that helped turn it into a hit.

Tom Fontana, the Jesuit-educated producer of”NYPD Blue”who also wrote episodes with religious themes for”St. Elsewhere,”is firmly on the side of the “Nothing Sacred” producers.

“I think the Catholic hierarchy wants to believe that Catholic priests are still all like Bing Crosby in `Going My Way,’ but I think that the world knows that priests are as flawed as the rest of us, and that’s what the rest of us want to see.”

Maybe Manson, Fontana and their screenwriting brethren are right about the public wanting a more adult and complex look at religion. Maybe Donohue is right in thinking that viewers will reject shows that play fast and loose with theology. Until the Nielsens for the first few episodes of “Nothing Sacred” come in, no one will know for sure. But Martha Williamson thinks there’s one thing that will ensure a show’s failure.

“American audiences are smart,” she says. “They are very smart, and they know when you are conning them. If somebody wants to do `Teen Angel’ and have great fun with it, that’s one thing. But if somebody wants to do a spiritual show and their heart isn’t in it, people won’t buy it.”

MJP END SEPINWALL