OK, so anybody who has seen HBO's hit series "The Sopranos" knows that mob boss Tony Soprano has what you could call a bad temper.
You might even call him a lying, cheating, gutter-mouthed killer who would gun down his best friend in cold blood.
But we've all got our flaws, right? And God still loves us.
At least that's "The Gospel According to Tony Soprano" by the Rev. Chris Seay, a Texas pastor who has written the most edgy, inspirational book among a host of new tomes trying to deliver spiritual messages to couch potatoes.
According to pollsters, 40 percent of Americans say they attend church regularly. So, Christian publishers are trying to reach the people who should be in the pews by beaming religious messages wrapped in images from cable TV, videotape and DVD.
Joining Tony Soprano's "Gospel" on bookstore shelves this fall are "The Gospel According to Harry Potter" and "The Gospel According to the Simpsons: Guide for Group Study." Two other gospel volumes based on "The Lord of the Rings" and Disney cartoons are planned.
It's not all that different than the way Jesus taught 2000 years ago, said the Rev. Robert Short, a Presbyterian pastor formerly from Brighton who was a pioneer in the field nearly 40 years ago.
When Short's paperback, "The Gospel According to Peanuts," appeared in 1965, many churchgoers were shocked that a comic strip would be used to teach religious lessons. But the idea caught on, and Short sold more than 10 million copies.
"Jesus was a master teacher, and he understood this idea," said Short, retired in Little Rock, Ark. "He understood that people would have scattered in a hundred directions if he had told them, 'Now it's time for a little lecture on theology.' Instead, he would say, 'I've got a story to tell you: There was once a man . . .' and he'd go on to tell popular stories to get his lessons across."
The idea of combining mass media and spiritual lessons has surfaced in the United States periodically over the past century.
In 1900, L. Frank Baum, a member of the Theosophical Society -- which promoted the study of faiths around the world -- wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" about a group of friends who discover spiritual resources like courage and love reawakening within themselves as they walk along life's yellow brick road.
But the Tony Soprano book appears to be the first time that such a violent and crude slice of culture has been repackaged for a Christian audience. Seay admitted readers may be jarred to read an inspirational book that features R-rated language involving sex.
Seay said he was concerned about the four-letter words in a Tarcher-Putnam edition of the paperback debuting at main line bookstores. But the words have been replaced with hyphens in a special edition of the paperback by Relevant Books that is for sale in Christian bookstores, Seay said.
Seay said he likes the two-edition approach so readers can choose for themselves how much raw Soprano language they want to experience. Seay insisted that he is not trying to promote crude language, and he does not want anyone to mistake these TV characters for saints.
"Tony, Carmela, Meadow, Christopher, Silvio and Pussy are not heroes," the book says at one point. "Although many people will be tempted to glorify the lifestyle their characters represent, they should instead see them as they are, broken people, people looking for answers, people waking up each day and performing tasks while they search for meaning in it all."
It's the universal qualities of this human drama that attracted millions of viewers, argued Seay, the pastor of a nondenominational church in Houston.
"There are people in the Bible very much like Tony Soprano who commit many of the same sins he commits," Seay said. "They want power; they want sex; they abuse and kill people. They do it all to glorify themselves, and eventually they learn that it's no good.
"The difference is that in the Bible they turn to God for redemption, and right now Tony is turning to psychotherapy. But I think Tony really is yearning for genuine redemption."
Mark Pinsky, religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, said he was skeptical about finding religious lessons in "The Simpsons" cartoon series. But, he said, a week of watching the show with his kids, ages 8 and 11, convinced him that the show could serve as a bridge between young people and organized religion.
"So many churches are eager to hang onto people from middle school through young adults -- and this kind of a book, drawing on the 'Simpsons,' is a way to attract them," Pinsky said.
Last year, Westminster John Knox Press, the publisher of Short's book in the 1960s, debuted Pinsky's original "The Gospel According to the Simpsons." It sold 70,000 copies, and Pinsky is back this fall with a sequel, which is a paperback guide for church groups to study the Bible along with Simpsons cartoons.
Kimberly Blessing, associate professor of philosophy at Siena Heights University in Adrian, said mass media are a great starting point for leading young people deeper into a study of the world's enduring values.
Last year, she used her own examples from "The Simpsons" as well as Pinsky's book to teach an introduction to philosophy course.
"I guess we did a kind of bait-and-switch with this," Blessing said. "I told students, 'If you like these cartoons, then you'll find Plato's Republic even more interesting, if you'll only give Plato a chance.' "Do we really think that a show like 'The Simpsons' is really so deep and complex? Well, no," she said. "But we hope it will inspire people to think about deeper things in the future."
At Siena Heights, Blessing is planning a class for next year that will draw eternal lessons from the Hollywood science-fiction thriller "The Matrix."
"In the end," she said, "we're always searching for new concrete examples to help people understand these more abstract lessons."