Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House had a big block of cheese…

If you clicked on this link it can only mean one thing, you are a fan of The West Wing!

Two days ago was #WestWingDay, which marked the anniversary of when the show premiered in 1999 with it’s untitled pilot episode. Opening in a hotel bar, Sam Seaborn and the reporter ‘Billy’ are locked in a tense conversation that includes casual male competitive aggression, the fate of a disgraced employee, and the possibility of a one-night stand. All happening in the context of dim lights, soft elegant music, and nine-hundred dollar suits. The writer Aaron Sorkin had gripped us with intelligent patter trotting through the more nuanced-seeming landscape of American politics. It was masterful.

Six seasons later it had won two shy of one-hundred awards, had hit number 10 on the Nielson ratings with 17.2 million viewers, and it still remains one of the most successful dramas in history. It controversially proved that drama can be both smart and popular.

I refused to watch The West Wing for a few years for one simple reason – all of my current-peers we’re watching it. I was, at the time, attending a very conservative, white-male-and-middle-class ministry training college, and they were all pretty obsessed with it. I was a young, working-class lad from Blackpool, and was trying to navigate that world without completely losing my precarious sense of self. Not watching The West Wing was one of those random ways I decided to accomplish this.

It’s not hard to see why so many conservative Christian vicars-in-waiting saw the characters in The West Wing as role models. Aaron Sorkin’s characters we’re written to wield his signature double-edged sword of righteousness and reason which they used to cut down their opposition both efficiently and skillfully. And they did so well-dressed and well-mannered with poise and dignity. However, they also did so with no small measure of arrogance and vaingloriousness. Because they didn’t always win the day, and because they really were genuine and caring people when it mattered, we were able to pass over these character flaws, and reevaluate them as endearing and even admirable. Eph. 4:26 was subtly rewritten to ‘be smug, but do not sin.’

This was perhaps most keenly seen in the episode ‘The Crackpots and These Women’ where Leo McGarry’s famous ‘block of cheese speech’ from the title of this post features. The story line follows the lives of ‘crackpots’ who wouldn’t normally gain the attention of the White House being given time and an audience, and the various staffers responses to them… like calling them crackpots, for instance. Toby calls it “Throw Open Our Office Doors To People Who Want To Discuss Things That We Could Care Less About… Day”, Margaret says “it’s definitely a waste of time”, and Sam blows it off with “It’s not so bad. You talk to them for a minute. You give them a souvenir pen.” These marginalized people are made fun of pretty much all day by everyone you admire.

The issue is, as evangelical Gospel-proclaiming Christians, we would probably be the crackpots in this story, not the elite and powerful deciding whether or someone is worthy of their time. And the other, perhaps more glaring problem, is we are called to exactly this type of ministry.

Christians cannot (or perhaps should not) chose the type of people to surround themselves with pastorally. Pastors cannot chose their flock to only consist of who they consider reasonable, fair-minded, rational or agreeable people. We’re called to the weak, the scared, the lonely, the fatherless, and the widow. We’re called to the marginalised, the hurting, and the desperate. We’re called to the voiceless, the helpless, the overlooked, and the rejected. We’re called to rejoice in serving exactly those people.

Smugness has no place in Christian leadership.

Evaluating the worthiness of someone has no place in pastoral aspirations.

We are called to be Christlike – and Jesus didn’t strut.

There’s so much to admire in The West Wing, and it remains on of my favourite shows, but TV doesn’t give us great or at least consistent role models to follow. There’s too much Chandler Bing, Jeremy Clarkson, and Joshua Lymon running our events and preaching our sermons.

As a bit of a contrast, I thought I’d end by quoting the lyrics from Emu Music’s ‘Consider Christ.’

All the best folks – and happy post-post-West Wing day!