Here's an excerpt on Ned from Mark Pinsky's The gospel according to the Simpsons:Ch.4 The evangelical next door - If everyone were like Ned Flanders, there'd be no need for heaven:
Ned grapples with other temptations of popular culture in various incarnations and, on those rare occasions when he succumbs to temptation, is quick to seek divine retribution. He angrily runs off a shady cable installer who offers an illegal hookup. Instead, he turns to satellite television, which enables him to view more than two hundred channels - almost all of which he then locks out for offensive content. Straying from his usual screen fare, such as reruns of the Jim Nabors Show, he once watched Married...with Children (on the same network that produces The Simpsons). He insistes he is afflicted with the flu for this lapse: "Oh, the network slogan is true! Watch Fox and be damned for all eternity!"
Ned, named for Flanders Street in Matt Groening's hometown of Portland, Oregon, represents most of the television viewing audience - white, Christian and middle class. Al Jean, a longtime writer for the series [says] "We don't mock Ned's faith...We actually think he's a guy with a lot of wonderful qualities...We can never get enough of Flanders. If poeple accuse us of being anti-Christian, we just ask whether they'd rather have Flanders as their neighbor or Homer.
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