Peter Owen Jones, who heads the 8-part BBC series, embarked on what is, without a doubt, the most interesting journey the BBC has ever taken anyone on. I would have to change my IP address to the UK to watch his interview on the site, which is a shame. Do I get Peter? Well, I don't think I would take him very seriously as a priest, and so why would I take him seriously as a show-host? Wearing the same Indiana Jones style gear as Monty Don in his 80 gardens saga, one is left wandering if there is a workshop one attends in order to make these programs in the Lara Croft Foundation.
However, embedded in Monty Don's authenticity and tongue-in-cheek enthusiasm are a series of well structured premises. Gardening is a universal language spoken by all, which is why this task is perhaps even possible.
One could argue that Owen Jones is up against a much greater challenge, but I kept feeling he wasn't taking it as seriously as he could. Off the bat, in the first series he is talking to his 'informant' about tau-tau effigies. In what must have been a replay of the conversation the informant explains that the hands turned down simbolize monotheism, and turned upwards polytheism. "Christianity has stripped them of their meaning." is what Pete says. No priest is at hand to confirm this: their needn't be, Pete is a Christian priest. But that isn't the point. 'Christianity' is presented as a being, a thing that magically ordered the new Tau-taus to take on this new shape. And herein lies part of the problem of the series, and one which Pete admits to not really understanding - how syncretism works.
I remember socializing with both a Rabbi at Bristol, and a Catholic priest in Hampstead, both introduced to me by my friend Adrian, and seeing in both of them the same thing I see in Peter: spiritual role-playing. Being a man of the cloth isn't about the institution per-se in Britain, but it is about the people the man of the cloth must bring in through the doors of the intitution he (or she) represents for its basic survival. That means that people like Peter can be men of the cloth while being normal members of society, who drink, smoke, marry and - this is the part that bothers me - play to a BBC agenda of what society wants in a TV program first and foremost, before defending his own spiritual agenda. His is not a spiritual man's quest, but a BBC/Society quest.
Monty is in fact on a quest with his gardens, and one he tries to convince the viewer to participate in and discover with him. Jones, on the other hand, doesn't want to be seen trying too hard to be an intellectual, because he is doing what he does in his church where his parishioners obviously see him as the ex disco-owning DJ who dresses up as a priest. By extension, we will enjoy the sight of an 21st Century pseudo-explorer clergyman 'mucking in' with the world's religious oddities: playing the role of the world's first multi-faith TV missionary, if you will.
