Rhetoric Race and Religion
In the second grade, I went to Career Day at Mountainview Elementary dressed as a preacher. What a little weirdo, I was. A weirdo who wanted to be like her dad, because here’s a confession: like Taylor, Megan, Tori and Kolby of Lifetime’s original docu-series,Preachers’ Daughters, I’m a preacher’s daughter too. I’m not Catholic and it’s certainly nothing I’m ashamed of, so technically that’s a pretty weak confession on my part. But being a preacher’s kid has a certain stigma around it: you’re either a wild child or those creepy kids in Mean Girls. The fact that I grew up as the daughter of a Baptist preacher inTexas is not particularly helpful to my “not crazy, I promise” case. It doesn’t seem to count that my parents were some of the least strict of all my friends and completely open minded to us making our own decisions regarding religion and morality. When asked what your father does, responding, “He’s a Baptist pastor, but he’s totally cool, and I turned out way normal,” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
How interesting might this show be if it showcased a group of teenagers who happen to have a unique knowledge of Christianity, both the spiritual side of faith and the political side of the Church, and how they either conform to their parents’ beliefs or buck up against them. As it is, this show takes a look at what it’s like to drink and party a lot, or want to drink and party a lot, when you have very strict parents who happen to be preachers. To a much broader degree that it mostly ignores, Preacher’s Daughters about knowing your parents’ beliefs, knowing their intentions for you and for the world, and actively defying those intentions because you feel strongly enough to do so. The interesting wrinkle of Preacher’s Daughters, or actually being a preacher’s daughter, is that disobedience is all at once a result of the strangling confines of religion, and at the same time, nothing about it at all.
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