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Born-agains and mainstream believers 173

program shows her that all families are basically the same. “You can tell
how different their life is from ours because he is a preacher and it’s not
really different. It’s the same,” she observes. There are, however, programs
that they describe as more religiously or spiritually significant, specifically
Touched by an Angel and It’s a Miracle. They actually see these as guides
to spirituality or religiosity.
For Jill and the girls, these programs’ religious or spiritual content is
rooted in the mysterious – even mystical – conditions through which lives
are touched and people changed. While the girls can only observe that
these programs are “very cool,” Jill tries to explain it more concretely,
suggesting that she shares the kinds of feelings of prescience that are in It’s
a Miracle. “I like that show because um . . . when someone... like me, I
can feel it that something is going to happen and then . . . that somebody
is going to help you get it,” she says. Referring to It’s a Miracle, Seventh
Heaven, and Touched by an Angel, the Interviewer asks if watching these
programs “helps in relation to your church or makes connections for
you.”

Laura: Sometimes.
Jill: Yeah . . . yeah, when I go to church and I pray, then I can feel it.
Interviewer: When you say you can feel it, do you feel in relation to those
shows, or are there other shows also, or other media. . . .
Jill: No, the way I feel is... he’s telling me . . . that I’m doing the best I
can. To be a good mom and a hard worker. To be the best I can. That’s
what he’s telling me. In the future time something will come up, but I
just don’t know what it is. But when it hits then I know. I just don’t
know when.
Interviewer: You feel when you watch these shows?
Laura: Yeah. And it feels like it’s actually like true and it feels like well . . .
it is kind of hard to explain. Like . . . like he’s actually watching over
us. Like he was over them and it feels like we’re in relation somehow.

For the Allens, then, there is a kind of spiritual connection to the themes of
these programs, something that they consciously refer to in their religious
practices at church, and a kind of identification with the experiences and
expectations of the characters in these programs. There is a way in which
the programs are almost a guide for spiritual life of a kind, as well as a
comforting reminder that the lives they see there are not that different
from their own.

Life in the mainstream
In A Generation of Seekers, Roof makes the point that the mainstream
believers are significant because they are “mainstream” and think of