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A grownup once asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" The man didn't ask because he wanted to be a neighbor, but because he wanted to find a loophole around being a neighbor. The man asked that question to "justify himself." Grownups tend do that.

Something else grownups tend to do these days is yank children into the adult world. Whether putting them on schedules as demanding as those of company presidents, dressing them up as beauty queens, leaving them all day under the eye of someone who doesn't love them like a parent, or simply surrendering their souls to the television, many grownups leave children in a disorienting world with nary an adult hand to guide them.

One grownup, however, has been an abiding adult presence for children for over three decades. He calls himself a neighbor. He is a gentleman—spindly and unflappable—who sings songs and animates puppet fantasies. Many grownups scratch their heads at the power this man has over their children. What is the attraction, they think, of a silly man who, every day, walks through the same door of a studio home, all smiles, singing It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood? Every day the man pulls off his sport jacket and dons a cardigan sweater and sits on a bench to remove his shoes, replacing them with canvas tennis shoes, still singing—It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood, a neighborly day for a beauty—would you be mine? Could you be mine?

He is Mister Rogers and his neighborhood friends, young and old, answer that question with a resounding Yes, I'll be your neighbor!—bewildered though they may be about how it could possibly be a beautiful day every day in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Through his daily half-hour children's program, Fred Rogers opens the door to childhood and walks inside, gently navigating his young television neighbors through their sometimes scary world in terms they can understand. They feel safe in his nurturing adult presence. He gives children permission to be children.

But what most people don't realize about Mister Rogers and his Neighborhood is that behind the puppets, the tennis shoes, and the simple songs lies an abiding faith and weighty theology. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ordained Fred Rogers as "an evangelist to work with children and families through the mass media." He does not bring evangelism in its churchly sense to this calling, and neither does he introduce religious themes in his programs. But his daily neighborhood visits with children sow seeds that awaken something basic in their hearts. It is hidden growth, like the parable of the seeds sown in secret. It is growth, as someone has said, as "silent as light, as subtle as life, and mightier than either." Mister Rogers, in his silent, subtle, mighty way, rescues children from a world that would too soon warp their souls. He summons them to a special place where trust arises and does not disappoint. Hearts come alive, awakened by his unconditional acceptance. "Everybody longs to be loved and longs to know that he or she is capable of loving," he says.

Mister Rogers calls it "loving someone into existence." And Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is his way of answering God's call to "broadcast grace throughout the land."

Every corner of the small, cramped, eclectic room in Pittsburgh that Mister Rogers calls an office is a testimony to the people who have loved him into existence. There is a couch, well-worn, and velveteen chairs next to end tables that look like Grandma's. These are from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, his childhood home. He writes letters and thinks about things like "big" and "little" from that couch—there is no desk. He is flanked by stuffed animals and baseball caps (and sometimes stuffed animals wearing baseball caps) that his many neighbors have given him over the years.

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March 6 2000, Vol. 44, No. 3