Let’s have a chat about how terrifying this could be.
Glee is often good when it addresses issues head-on, so there’s that.
Otherwise, though, we have 4 vaguely Christian characters (like, they say they love Jesus, but they don’t seem to have any of the real-life hangups American Christian people have about the gay, or abortion, or, sex or drinking or like, anything). And for Samuel Larsen’s character, it may not be vaguely — from what Ryan Murphy said on The Glee Project, Christianity will be his character’s raison d’etre. Goody.
Given the massive fuck you that Grilled Cheezus was to people who do not believe in sky fairies, I’m not actually all that hopeful.
Talk me down?
Deconstructing Glee 
Could be good; could be a hot mess…
I am kind of wondering about Quinn and Mercedes with Xtianity.
Quinn had one of those clusterfucks in her life, that tends to either turn American Evangelicals with her background completely off of God, or tends to make them into Jay Bakker-esque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bakker) Xtians (there are also those who do the whole big conversion drama–but I don’t think Quinn has the patience for that kind of story unless she thought it would benefit her more than irritate her)
Mercedes is definitely Xtian, but I don’t know how conservative she is. My clue that all may not be as it seems, is that the organist at her church was playing a hymn that has its roots in Oxford Movement Anglicanism, not the kind of tune I associate with uber-conservative American Protestantism, and more something I would associate with Mainline Protestantism (which then brings up a very large discussion about race and American worship). It is very possible that Mercedes attends a fairly liberal church, so being accepting wouldn’t even be a question for her. Perhaps a predominately black Methodist, Episcopal, or UCC church.
The boys on the other hand…that is where I worry…
I’m vacillating between excited and worried for this. I’m confident they’ll handle it well, because I felt they handled it well in GC too (I disagree that the final message was necessarily for Christianity, because Kurt wasn’t converted, and it wasn’t what brought his dad back–there was the implication that family was really what Kurt believed in. Really, I think the message was that you believe whatever you need to believe to get through it all. Also, Kurt is magical and brought his dad back himself :D).
But I’m worried for Santana, and Brittany, and Kurt and Blaine, and the crap they may end up having to face… D:
(I will be very interested to see what Mercedes and Quinn have to say in this ep. very much indeed.)
I liked how religion was handled to GC. It allowed all sides to air their opinions and was mostly respectful. I took Kurt attending church at the end of the episode to be him supporting/humoring his friend, but still being true to himself by wearing the hat. As Letters from Titan has pointed out, he knows better.
Then there was the last Christmas episode… I found that episode and how it treated the Jewish characters to be completely offensive. I have always liked that the show had multiple Jewish characters with complex and different Jewish identities. And then it decided to erase them in a completely unrealistic way. Rachel found the true meaning of Christmas from listening to the Bible story? This makes even less sense than her being materialistic about Christmas gifts in the first place. I don’t care if it is a reference to a beloved Christmas movie! (Sorry, this episode almost made me stop watching glee.)
Glee can do religion well and do religion poorly. I am nervous but I will wait and see.
In reference to the christian characters who don’t seem to have all the christian hang ups…that’s my experience with many christians. I can ask them if they believe in god/jesus/etc, and their answer is almost always “absolutely, i’m a christian”. These are the same people that partied like a rockstar all weekend, got high in the parking lot where we work, and (in one case) had an abortion three months ago just to find out she is now pregnant again. To be honest, the only time these rather liberal “christians” seem to remember that the god they buy into had some guidelines for life written down in a book (my coaster of choice during hotel stays) is when dealing with homosexuality and abortion. That is when christianity becomes the socially acceptable shining shield for prejudice.
Concerning the upcoming episode, I am not too sure about it. I tend to assume they are going to screw it all up so that I am not too disappointed when the inevitably do. Then, there are the occasions where I am even pleasantly surprised by how they handle a controversial issue. However, history has shown that the writers tend to lean towards christianity, or at least towards it being better to allow others to press their religion upon you than argue against it.
The only thing that really bothered me about GC was that Kurt was the only one that didn’t believe in god. The gay kid being the only one that didn’t believe in god didn’t sit right with me.
I actually think Glee pretty accurately represents how people, at least in my experience, treat religion in high school. They have theirs, they often just assume everyone else shares theirs and are shocked to find out otherwise (everyone’s reactions to Kurt’s atheism in Grilled Cheesus), and they don’t really follow a lot of the rules set down by their religion. It’s something they do at church, and maybe at church-related events, but for most teenagers being a Christian doesn’t seem to stop them from having sex, getting drunk, or doing anything else they want to do or think they need to do in order to be cool.
That being said, I’ll be interested to see how Glee treats a devoutly Christian character. I would hope it would be fairly, but I’m not going to hold my breath.