In today’s television world, anything goes. We’ve seen shows about everything from sewage treatment, meat slaughtering, trash collection, and prostitution houses. Yet for all the unvarnished look at life that “reality” shows bring to viewers, there is one thing that is apparently too hot for television: praying to Jesus.
According to Phil Robertson, star of A&E’s mega-hit series “Duck Dynasty,” the producers of the cable program deliberately removed his and other family members’ references to Jesus in prayer.
Robertson revealed the censorship in an interview with a small Christian sporting magazine called Sports Spectrum over a year ago. He also revealed that the editors of the show would insert fake beeps in the audio tracks to make it look like Robertson and his family were using profanities when, in fact, they were not.
“These people [the viewers] thought there was some profanity when there was zero,” he disclosed.
While there was no profanity being used on camera, there was something else that apparently was too much for A&E’s editors: the Robertson family ending its mealtime prayers in the name of Jesus.
“So they would just have me saying, ‘Thank you Lord for the food, thank you for loving us, amen,’” Robertson revealed. “So I said, ‘Why would you cut out ‘In Jesus’s name?’ They said, ‘Well those editors are probably doing that. They just think that they don’t want to offend some of the Muslims or something.’”
According to Robertson, after he confronted the production staff about the censorship, they stopped removing the Christian closing.
