Between Science and Superstition
ROD’S RELIGION
The question of whether Rod Serling was a religious man is often asked. Serling’s explicit answers to that question and the answers that are implicit in his work are complicated. He was born into a Reform Jewish family that rarely attended synagogue (neither Rod nor his brother, Robert, were bar mitzvahed), and he later joined Unitarian congregations, first in Ohio and then in California when the family relocated there. Unitarian Universalism is a liberal faith that defies easy definition. His wife, Carol, was already a Unitarian when they met, and she encouraged him to join the church, although their daughter, Anne, dismisses suggestions that Carol forced him to abandon Judaism for Unitarianism: “No one forced my father to do anything.”1 Robert Serling once referred to Reform Jews as “Unitarian Jews,” implying that his brother’s conversion was little more than semantics. “Rod hated anti-Semitism and he bristled at any suggestion of anti-Semitism,” he said, “and yet he was never very Jewish himself.”2
The tenets of Unitarian Universalism would certainly have meshed well with Serling’s beliefs. The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, which the Serlings attended, declares as its vision:
To create and nurture a community where the search for truth is free and unhindered; where the dignity, worth, and rights of every individual are revered; where spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth are stimulated and encouraged; where the process is open and democratic; where our interdependence with all life on earth is recognized and honored; and where the transforming power of love is acknowledged.3
Serling had embraced these tenets long before he moved to California. In his 1946 application to Antioch College, he summarized his attitudes toward religion in terms with which many Unitarians would sympathize: “I dislike the institution of organized religion, preferring a personal sort of belief including personalized worship. I believe in God, in a certain code of moral ethics (excessively liberal, in some eyes, perhaps) and consider the modern conception of racial groups a harmful creation of unnatural barriers between human beings that need not exist.”4 Unitarian Universalist congregations, which purport to welcome people of all faiths and those of no faith, implicitly proceed from the premise that religious distinctions similarly qualify as “unnatural barriers between human beings that need not exist.”
Serling’s former reverend, Ernest Pipes of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, said, “Theologically speaking, Rod was what we call a naturalistic humanist.” By definition, naturalistic humanists tend to accept that supernatural claims, such as whether God exists or whether there is an afterlife, are unverifiable and therefore should not be presented as more than personal opinions. During a January 1968 commencement ceremony at Binghamton Central High School, Serling delivered an address that exemplifies this underlying philosophy. He cautioned his listeners that “what follows are very subjective opinions of my own.… I offer them not as undying truths, but personal points of view.” He then encouraged “a belief in your own particular God” and “an adherence to the tenets of your particular religion” but counseled them to “believe without proselytizing. Believe without peddling. Believe without working both sides of the street, trying to sell others that which is uniquely your own.”5 On another occasion, Serling told a reporter, “I don’t like to see people peddling God like a used Chevrolet. That turns a simple act of faith into absurdity.”6
Although it does not seem that Serling ever used humanist to describe himself, the term fits him comfortably. In 1972, Serling summarized his beliefs in terms that echoed his college application essay, with an added measure of humanism:
I’m not religious in the orthodox sense that I go to church a lot, but I have strong beliefs. I believe in God. But I think I believe in man more. Now, if that sounds inconsistent, run it around the block a couple times—think about that. In a sense I’m complimenting God. He made me and he made the humans that I love. But I have to believe in man because that’s where it is, and if we don’t do it, no one else shall. And we’ve got such a long way to go, the problems are seemingly so totally insurmountable.7
In short, Serling believed that humans have to work to solve the world’s problems, a viewpoint he distilled as, “If you want to prove God is not dead, first prove man is alive.”8 Here, Serling is essentially professing deism—the belief in a Creator who takes no active role in human affairs and does not interfere with the natural order.* In this way, deism resembles naturalism, which supports Rev. Pipes’s characterization of Serling as a naturalistic humanist.
Did Rod Serling believe in an afterlife? In his last professional interview, he provided a roundabout answer to this question when he was asked, “If you’re reincarnated, what will your next life be?” “I don’t believe in reincarnation,” he said. “That’s a cop-out, I know. I don’t want to be reincarnated.” Serling cited a Willa Cather short story, “Paul’s Case,” in which the title character commits suicide, and as Cather writes, “the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.” “That’s what I anticipate death will be,” Serling said. “A totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything. I think once around is enough.”9
Decades later, a fundamentalist Christian website used this response to argue that Serling’s soul is now burning in hell.10 Those less zealous might merely be surprised to learn that Serling, despite his frequent literary use of such religious motifs as angels, demons, the eternal salvation of heaven, and the eternal damnation of hell, apparently did not believe in such notions. This seeming contradiction can be reconciled by separating the man from the writer; while working in a fantasy setting, Serling may simply have utilized the most convenient tools at his disposal. Serling did not need to believe in heaven to suggest that kindly, self-sacrificing Lew Bookman of The Twilight Zone’s “One for the Angels” belongs in such a place.
When asked whether her husband believed in supernatural phenomena, Carol Serling said, “He really wanted to believe.”11 Though she was referring to such theories as the existence of extraterrestrials and extrasensory perception, this answer could just as reasonably apply to Rod Serling’s affinity for guardian angels (“Mr. Bevis” and “Cavender Is Coming”), his readiness to use heaven as a literary tool (“One for the Angels”), and his willingness to characterize God as a force that can literally be spoken to and bargained with (“In Praise of Pip”). He really wanted to believe that goodness leads to eternal reward and that celestial forces are guiding humans down that path. But did he believe that these concepts have any basis in reality? Carol Serling likely answered this question as well: “He had no direct experiences of his own and so he remained skeptical.”
Beyond the presence of religious symbols in purely fantastic settings, Serling’s work is replete with characters who invoke God as the source of sound morality or who seek God’s forgiveness or guidance when faced with a moral dilemma. One of Serling’s most wrenching moral dilemmas occurs in the climax of Studio One’s military drama, “The Strike,” when Major Gaylord must decide whether to sacrifice twenty men to save five hundred others. After much soul-searching, Gaylord gives the order and then seeks spiritual reassurance from an army chaplain as well as God’s forgiveness. Theater critic Gerald Weales noted an apparent contradiction in Gaylord’s reaction: “Although all of Gaylord’s lines to the Chaplain suggest that he has no faith in God, Serling has him say ‘God rest their souls’ and ‘God forgive me.’ The Chaplain assures him ‘He’ll do both, Major. I’m sure He’ll do both.’ An interpretative vertical probe might suggest that the final exchange is ironic, actually it is a cheat, a pulling away from the play itself, a chance for the audience to nod comfortably and prepare for the closing commercial.”12 It is unlikely that Serling intended to comfort the audience—that was not his style. It is more likely that he was again using the easiest—and most understandable—tool at his disposal. Gaylord’s personal morality told him that he had committed a sin, and the most convenient and conventional response is to have him confess this sin and request forgiveness from God—even if, as Weales pointed out, doing so is inconsistent with the rest of Gaylord’s dialogue.†
Nevertheless, Serling’s characters repeatedly invoke God as the ultimate in moral authority. This does not mean, however, that Serling believed that religion must be the sole basis for morality. Serling’s words and those of his characters suggest that he did not equate God and religion. Serling’s early suspicion of organized religion persisted throughout his life, and he frequently attacked what he saw as religious hypocrisy, reserving special venom for those who use the name of God to justify immorality.
In The Loner’s “A Little Stroll to the End of the Line,” a fire-and-brimstone preacher attempts to hire Bill Colton to commit murder, rationalizing the request by labeling it a “virtuous task” in which Colton will be acting as “the good right hand of the Lord” since the intended victim is “the devil.” Colton responds, “I’m afraid if I had to make a choice between you and the devil, it would take a number of months before I could come to a decision.” When the preacher persists, Colton offers a pointed rebuke: “Why don’t you believe in God?”
Speaking at Ithaca College’s commencement on May 13, 1972, Serling exhorted the graduates,
Cherish what you believe. Don’t job off one single value judgment because it swims upstream against what appears to be a majority. Respect your own logic, your own sense of morality. Death and taxes may be the only absolutes. It’s for you to conjure up the modus operandi of how you live, act, react and hammer out a code of ethics.13
These comments are antithetical to the idea that dogma is the best source for sound morality. Ethics, Serling argues, are not found hammered out on stone tablets but must be hammered out by each individual. This reverence for individual morality as opposed to adherence to Scripture is a basis for both Reform Judaism and Unitarianism.
Serling’s opposition to a literalist interpretation of Scripture was displayed in an exchange of correspondence with a Baptist pastor who had objected to “The Hunt,” a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone written by Earl Hamner Jr. The story involved a man, Hyder Simpson, and his dog, Rip, who are killed in a hunting accident. Walking a forest path in the afterlife, Simpson and Rip meet a good-natured gatekeeper who invites Simpson to enter what the gatekeeper implies is the Kingdom of Heaven. When Simpson attempts to enter, however, the gatekeeper informs him that Rip is not allowed. Simpson decides that any place that won’t welcome his faithful dog isn’t for him and continues further down the path. An angel soon approaches Simpson and Rip and says that he has been looking for them to take them to heaven. Simpson relates what had happened at the first gate, and the angel explains that the other gate led to hell and the only reason they wouldn’t allow Rip inside is because the dog would have alerted him to where he was truly headed: “A man will walk into hell with both eyes open, but even the devil can’t fool a dog!”
The Baptist pastor watched “with a great deal of disgust” because the plot “greatly misconstrued the teaching of The Holy Bible” and “presented a distorted view of those teachings.” Specifically, “Mr. Simpson’s wife, ‘old woman,’ distinctly said ‘Old man was not a member of the church.’ Insofar as the story went, the idea presented was that as long as a man leads a good moral life … he is assured of the Promised Land. This is completely erroneous! Might I suggest you read Luke 18:18–24. This is a parable taught by Jesus concerning a man who kept all the commandments. I fully realize your program was purely fictional, but still that does not change the damage that was done. Thousands of ministers stand Sunday after Sunday condemning exactly what [this story] condoned! … The Bible is explicit concerning eternal life…. Old Rip, the faithful hound, isn’t, hasn’t, and never will be able to guide a person clear of the gates of Hell! That is something only Jesus can do—not a dog.”14
In response, Serling wrote,
While I am truly sorry that you found such questionable elements on the program, THE HUNT, I must nonetheless respond with a candor equal to yours. The very explicit, and at times narrow, viewpoint of the Fundamentalist religionist is not the universally accepted approach to the theological view. Hence, while you can certainly quote scriptural support to your position, I reserve the right, as did the author, Earl Hamner, Jr., to dramatize yet another point of view. It was his feeling and mine that good works, honesty, and a moral life, are … of the essence in considering the whole man—his destiny and his after-life. While there are certainly thousands of ministers and parishioners who are in disagreement with this point of view, there are equal thousands who support it.15
“Question: How does a man react to the knowledge that he’ll be blown to bits in a half an hour? Answer: That depends on the individual.” These are the words of Romney Wordsworth, played by Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone’s “The Obsolete Man” (1961). The episode presents a totalitarian state that claims to have “proven that there is no God” and has banned all books, including, of course, the Bible, a forbidden copy of which is Wordsworth’s most treasured possession. Sentenced to death for the crime of being an obsolete librarian but allowed to pick the method of his execution, Wordsworth chooses to die by having a bomb explode in his tiny apartment, and he asks that the event be televised. On the night of the execution, he lures the chancellor of the state into the apartment and locks the door so that they face death together as the television audience witnesses what the experience reveals about their characters. The chancellor gradually loses his composure, finally dissolving into tears and pleading, “In the name of God, let me out!” This deathbed conversion is Wordsworth’s victory: “Yes, Chancellor,” he says, “in the name of God, I will let you out.” Wordsworth hands over the key, and the chancellor escapes moments before the room explodes.
Superficially, “The Obsolete Man” seems to constitute a scathing attack on atheism. Serling’s more direct target, however, is totalitarianism. In a lecture delivered at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, Ohio, Rev. Wayne Arnason addressed this distinction by placing “The Obsolete Man” in context: “Rod Serling [wrote] in the era of Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade, and he created The Twilight Zone at the height of the Cold War. The best-known totalitarian state of the time was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was officially an atheistic state. In the minds of the general public, the words atheist and communist became a matched set.” It was natural, Arnason concluded, for Serling to decide that “the evil state would best be portrayed as atheistic.”16
If Serling were writing today, after the fall of communism, he might pattern his totalitarian state after a theocracy, the current exemplar of the sort of state that forces the individual to submit to its “official” views. Romney Wordsworth is not declared obsolete because he is a Christian—he is declared obsolete because he is a librarian. The state in “The Obsolete Man” does not recognize individual rights in any pursuit, religious or otherwise. As Serling forcefully concludes in his closing narration, “Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man—that state is obsolete.”
After a speech in Washington, D.C., in March 1965, Serling suffered chest pains and feared he was having a heart attack. His brother, Robert, drove him to a hospital. On the hospital’s chart. Rod Serling had offered Unitarian as his religious affiliation. Noticing this, Robert Serling said that although his brother was “proud of his ancestry” and “very touchy about anything smacking of anti-Semitism,” this was “the first time I realized that he didn’t consider himself a Jew by practicing religion.”17
Humanist, naturalist, and skeptic are all labels that could fit Rod Serling. But when he feared he was having a heart attack, he called himself a Unitarian.
In late 1971, Bill Little, associate editor of the Peoria Journal Star, asked Serling to provide a statement about his personal philosophy. Serling’s response provides a definitive final word on the subject:
Dear Mr. Little:
As to my philosophy, let’s try this: It’s from a piece called “Desiderata,” found on the wall of Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore and dated 1692. It’s part of the last line and goes as follows:
“Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”
Will that do it?
Cordially,
Rod Serling18
* This conclusion is supported by one of Serling’s earliest works of fiction, “A Transcript of the Proceedings in the Case of the Universe Versus War,” a paper he wrote at Antioch in which God declares that war must be banished from the universe but that he cannot take this action himself—humans must do it.
† A similar scenario occurs in Playhouse 90’s “A Town Has Turned to Dust” when Sheriff Harvey Denton confesses to a priest after having specifically referred to himself as an infidel. The priest agrees to listen to the confession but confirms that because Denton is an infidel, his confession has no spiritual meaning.