Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers

Theologian Tuttle (Can I Get a Witness?) mixes anecdotes, analysis, and theological exploration in this delightful biography of Fred Rogers. In the first third, she follows Rogers’s life from awkward, sickly child growing up in Latrobe, Penn.; through college at Rollins Collins; and the beginnings of his career in television. While Tuttle’s beginning grafts many religious overtones onto Rogers’s run-of-the-mill Christian upbringing, the remaining two-thirds build a striking and coherent image of Rogers’s faith with impressive close readings of episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, interviews, and writings plucked from Rogers’s career. The comparison of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to parables and the connection between Rogers’s focus on emotion and the Incarnation in his personal beliefs are especially poignant. Tuttle provides a clear sense of the religious origins of Rogers’s progressivism and its limits by showing how he gently pushed against gender norms and urged racial integration, but also insisted the gay actor playing Officer Clemmons remain closeted. There is a reverence in how Tuttle describes Rogers’s actions and beliefs, but she avoids hagiography by showing some of her subject’s shortcomings, such as his perfectionism and persistent avoidance of conflict. Tuttle’s satisfying biography provides a keen sense of the deeply religious forces behind a classic TV show and its widely lauded creator. (Oct.)