When CBS approached Martha Williamson to produce “a show about angels,” she saw an opportunity to transform people’s perceptions of angels from that of a novelty to a spiritual reality. During its nine-year run, from 1994-2003, Touched by an Angel was the top-rated show on CBS and earned multiple award nominations, from the Golden Globes to the GLAAD Media Awards. Looking back, she says the show’s unflinching portrayal of faith “forced a spiritual conversation” that is still taking place on network television.
Last week, CBS DVD and Paramount Home Entertainment released two best-of DVDs, centered on the themes of “Hope” and “Holiday.” Each disc features four episodes, along with new introductions by Williamson that speak to the episode’s themes and recall her production memories.
Williamson spoke with Christianity Today about the show’s portrayal of faith, its impact, and its legacy.
Why do you think people are so drawn to this idea of angels walking among us?
I think that angels do walk among us, and if you have a sense of that, you want somebody to tell you that you’re not crazy. There’s a saying that each of us has a God-shaped void, and when someone finally understands that space in your heart was made for God to dwell, then it’s a great relief. With Touched by an Angel, we always tried to make it about God. We never said it was a show about angels; the angels are there to point us to God.
People want to know that God is there. I have met atheists who simply decided to become atheists because they didn’t want to be disappointed. The show received hundreds of thousands of letters over nine years, and people didn’t write to the angels as much as they wrote to the message. They said, “Whoever’s writing this message, please keep sending it out.” They’d write, “It encouraged me, it changed my life, it lifted me up. I wanted to kill myself, and decided not to once I heard that God loves me, that he exists and wants to be part of my life.” That was always the message that we put out there, and we tried to put it out there from a Judeo-Christian, biblical point of view.
How did you approach the portrayal of faith on the show?
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith was an interesting word on our show because we need to have faith in things we cannot see but we had a one hour show every week where we had witnesses to God. You saw angels light up and say, “I am an angel from God.” At that point, you don’t need faith; you need the courage to accept what you now know is true.
CBS did not say to me, “We want a show about faith, or about God.” CBS said, “We want to do a show about angels.” I said, “If you want me to do a show about angels, it has to be biblically accurate. That means that angels are not going to be recycled dead people; we’re not going to have them wiggling their noses or popping in and out or messing with people’s lives. They are there to do one thing, and that is to perform God’s will—to bring healing, to bring messages, to sometimes bring correction. All the things the Bible says that angels do, that’s what the angels will do. And we’re not going to ask them to do more.”
At that point, CBS only had four weeks to put this new show together, instead of the usual nine months, so they were ready to do just about anything. As a result, I did have absolute control over the message. We protected that every single week. The message never changed from day one.
On the show, there is a lot of talk about faith and hope and God. As far as pointing people to Jesus Christ, how did you approach that?
We took a lot of flak from both sides, from the people who said, “You’re talking too much about God and it’s sounding too Christian.” We got flak from Christians and Christian leaders who said, “You’re not talking about Jesus.” My answer to that: I am a television writer who happens to be a Christian who was hired to do a show about angels, and trust me, it could be a lot worse than it is. We did not use the name of Jesus, but we used the words of Jesus, and the Word of God will never return void. We used the heart of Jesus. We used the message of Jesus. And on the very, very last episode, those people who saw the finale, there is to this day discussion as to who was the person who escaped from that prison and said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
So was that meant to be Jesus?
That was my Christ, at that moment. And it was a very, very powerful last moment. I could not finish that series without completing my Christian journey.
Are you happy with how the show turned out?
As a Christian, how could you not be happy with the way the show turned out? That they are still putting out DVDs and sending out the words “God exists, God loves you, and God wants to be part of your life”? There are a lot of successful television shows on the networks and on cable, but how many of them literally have been able to say that lives were changed, that families were saved as a result?
There was a man who was going to shoot himself—he had the gun and he’d written the letter and he was going to shoot himself on a particular day in the parking lot of a local hospital and put a sign on the outside of the door that said, “Use my organs.” Then he saw a show about transplants on Touched by an Angel and realized that it was not for him to decide when to live and when to die. And he decided to live and he got himself into therapy. We got stories like that all the time. That’s what keeps you going at the 3 a.m. rewrites. You know there’s somebody out there who needs to hear that they are loved and that God exists and that they’re not crazy. What I love about it is that those messages are still going out there.
We addressed divorce, drug use, grief, but we also talked about big issues—racism, slavery in the Sudan, human rights in China—there is nothing we didn’t try to address because you can’t do a show that says God has the world in his hands, and then say this one is out of his reach. Everything comes under the sovereignty of God, so we had to find a way to address that. If I have any regret at all, it’s that we didn’t keep going. after awhile, I find these things come in cycles. It seems that we need this message now more than ever, when people are struggling and times are tough and people need to know, “You may have lost their mortgage, but you didn’t lose your soul.”
How do you view the show’s legacy now, six years later?
I am so grateful that I was part of something that is so frequently referred to as “pioneering” and “ground-breaking.” There have been television shows with heavenly angels before, but nothing that consistently strove to send a very clear message that God exists and that he loves you. The stories that we told always ended the same way—with a challenge, to the guest star and to the viewer—to find out for yourself, to ask him, to seek him. “Draw nigh unto God and he will draw nigh unto you” (James 4:8).
How do you see the show’s legacy being carried on? It made it possible for people to start talking about God unashamedly, and they’re still doing it: looking at God from not just as a matter of faith but a matter of doubt. They are really asking questions, really exploring. On network television, you didn’t see people really questioning their faith. Networks began to see that there is clearly a place in television for this, that people really are searching. Other television series were now given permission to talk about God, and people brought their own points of view to it—some were positive and some were negative, but at least it opened the conversation. We really forced a spiritual conversation that before threw angels in the same bag as genies and other supernatural characters, but suddenly we treated faith as the star of the show.
How has your faith come into play for the projects you’ve done since then?
I have turned down so much work simply because it was completely antithetical to my faith. I don’t need to do an aggressively spiritually-themed television show or film, but what I can’t do is anything that undercuts the message of Touched by an Angel.
So what have you been working on?
I’ve been working on a pilot for CBS, and I’ve been working on a screenplay based on Randy Travis’ hit song, “Three Wooden Crosses.” I can’t talk about the show for CBS, but it will be a family series that explores how your past affects your future. It’s still in development.
With these DVDs, you filmed new introductions to each episode. How did you like being in front of the camera?
It was such an unusual thing for me to be in front of the camera. I’ve been doing the Touch of Encouragement website, and that’s why CBS asked me to do these introductions. It took me awhile to get used to it, but it’s really lots of fun. I loved the chance to read my own lines and send out the encouragement myself. It was really fun to go back and remember some of those anecdotes about the show.
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